Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863 if you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: It's 06:00 and time again for brain matters, the official radio show of the University of Alabama Counseling center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. My name is Doctor BJ Guenther and I'm the host of the show along with my colleague and producer, Katherine Howell. In case you don't know, this show is about mental and physical health issues that affect college students and in particular UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 06:00 p.m. on 90.7 fm, or you can listen online at wvuafm ua.edu. you can also download some apps, and one is a good app to download. The show is MyTuner radio app and just type in WVUaFM 90.7. Also, I think this is our fourth show for the fall semester. We don't do shows in the summer, so we'll do shows all the way up until the winter break and then we'll come back in the spring and do more shows. So I'm always needing topic ideas. And if you're listening, and maybe we haven't covered a topic like the one tonight, for instance. Or maybe we have covered the topic in the past, but it's been a while. We can always do, you know, I think it's a good idea to always do topics pretty regularly on depression or anxiety test anxiety, stress management, particular issues that affect college students. So if you have a topic that you want us to try to cover, email those ideas to me at brainmattersradio at wvuafm ua.edu and I'll consider using your topic, and I'll try to remember to give out that email address again. I always forget, and Katherine's so good at trying to remind me, and I just don't pay attention a lot of times because I'm so into what we're talking about. Tonight's topic, we've never talked about this before, and I don't know why because I think it's pertinent. I think it's pertinent probably with any population or age group. And hopefully we'll talk a little more about that when we get into it. But is the topic's neuroplasticity? And I know I'm going to mess that up so y'all just get used to it. But what is it and why does it matter? With its intricate web of neural connections, the human brain has long been a subject of fascination and study. And at the heart of this complex network lies the concept of neuroplasticity. A term that has revolutionized our understanding of the brain's adaptability. And this dynamic process allows us to learn, grow and recover from injuries, showcasing the brain's resilience and potential. And my guest tonight is doctor Brock Kerwin. And doctor Kirwan is going to talk to us hopefully in more detail about what neuroplasticity is. When I did some research before the show, it's just really fascinating. It's really a fascinating topic, but it's also a fascinating science that I really don't know how old this science is. So doctor Kirwan, thank you for being on the show and I want to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself and tell the listeners about your credentials and why you're interested in this topic.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me on. My name is Brock Kerwin. I am the director of the Mindcore neuroimaging facility at the University of Pennsylvania.
This is a new imaging facility here and so I'm new to Penn. For the past 15 years I was a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. My background is in memory research, so I'm interested in how the brain forms and retains long term memories and neuroplasticity is a huge part of that. So yeah, I do some seminars, some continuing medical education seminars on neuroplasticity where I talk to folks in the community about what it is and what it does. And so I'm excited to share that with you all tonight.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Well, and that I just mentioned before we started the show, that's how I have come across your information for the show and really got the idea to have you on to talk about this topic because, and you mentioned you were at BYU out in Utah and one of the things it listed for your credentials was the MRI research facility.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: It sounds kind of similar as to what you're doing right now, maybe a little more in detail. That was fascinating to me. Talk about what that means. Like, does that mean like people who have had any kind of brain injury, whether it be like a concussion or a stroke or disease or something, would they get an MRI? And then is that. How does it work?
How does it work? I'm getting ahead of myself. So excited about talking about this.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So both at BYU and now at Penn, the facilities that I've helped to run have been research facilities. So we're focused on mostly on healthy young adults are the typical population. In other words, we scan a lot of college students at our facilities, a lot of cognitive neuroscience, but we do research on various patient populations. So we've done stuff with older adults, people who have suspected dementia, like Alzheimer's disease, for example.
A lot of the research that's going on here at Penn focuses on people who, as you say, have had brain damage, a traumatic brain injury, something like that. MRI is really good at detecting those kind of subtle brain changes that you see after something like a traumatic brain injury and kind of the development of the recovery over time.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: So is it recommended when some. Because I was really shocked. Most of the articles I read to prep for this show, they didn't mention college age persons. And so I'm really kind of surprised that you just mentioned that, since this show is really geared for the college student population.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: And so is it. I have seen students, and Katherine probably has to have two or young people this age group, 18 to 24 ish, who have had traumatic brain injury, whether it was an accident, a car accident, or some other accident or concussion or maybe even epilepsy. I don't know what kind of issues are related. You mentioned Alzheimer's for older people, but do you have to be eligible somehow to.
I don't know how that works to be tested for neuroplasticity. When you say the MRI research, does it show how. Well, first of all, define what it is. Define what it is, because people who are listening probably really don't know what we're talking about.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So MRI is magnetic resonance imaging. It's just like the MRI scan that you would get in any hospital situation. So we're using the same clinical grade MRI scanners. And often what we'll do is we will, in my research in particular, we'll tune the scanner to, instead of paying attention to structure of the brain, we pay attention to where blood is flowing in the brain. That gives us some idea of what the functions are of those brain regions.
If we're talking about something like neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is defined as a change in the brain's structure or function in response to internal or external stimuli. If you're interested in a concept like that, in testing whether neuroplasticity is occurring, then you may not see it in the gross brain structure, but in the connections between brain regions and how they're talking to one another, it will show up.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: The college students you mentioned, are they volunteers? Is that what's happening? So that you have maybe a baseline to compare and contrast?
[00:08:57] Speaker C: That's exactly right, yes.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. What about, um.
Oh, I've got so many things I've jotted down. So where do I start? How is there a way to improve neuroplasticity? I read some things about that, but how does that. What does that look like?
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question and an area of very active research right now.
In some ways, neuroplasticity is actually kind of boring, because this is just how your brain works.
Neuroscientists get really excited about neurons and studying neurons.
They're the cells in your brain that are doing the thinking.
And the way that they do that is by representing information. So neurons are different from other cells in your body in that they represent information, and the information is in the change.
If a stimulus is constant, that doesn't tell you anything, but if the stimulus changes, now, that's interesting, and that's informational. So neurons, in order for them to represent information, have to be able to change their activity levels. So neuroplasticity is just the ability of these neurons to change. It's kind of how neural information works is through neuroplasticity. So anytime that you form a new memory, technically, that's neuroplasticity. So if you hear about a new album that's coming out and you want to go check it out and you remember the title of the album, neuroplasticity, if you go to your class and you learn something from the lecture, hopefully you were learning something from lectures and attending classes, that's neuroplasticity. That underlies that. If you go to a Bama football game and you remember the score of.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: The game, don't forget.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
I visited your campus, and this is a.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: It was crazy this weekend. That's a whole nother show.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Okay. All right. Yes. So if you attended the game, any of the festivities on campus, which were quite impressive then, and you remember any of that, that's neuroplasticity. Right. So neuroplasticity, in some ways, is very mundane. It's very boring. It's just how your brain remembers new information. It gets more exciting when you start to. Well, for me as a neuroscientist, it gets more exciting when you look at the, at the details of how is that actually happening? How are the connections between the neurons? How are those synapses changing? What are the underlying mechanisms? How much can they change? And that's really where I think that the science is really going, is looking, testing the limits of these things.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: How old. I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: No, go ahead.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: I was going to ask, I mentioned, and how old is this field, neuroplasticity?
[00:11:56] Speaker C: I think that neuroplasticity as a field is maybe 50 years old. So researching, and it sort of coincides with our research of memory and changes of the brain in response to insult or injury. All of that kind of recovery process kind of coincides with our research of neuroscience in general. I think the term neuroplasticity is older, but the excitement around it and this idea where it sort of caught on and kind of caught the public attention is much more recent. That's maybe within the last five, or.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Maybe because of some. Maybe we'll talk about this later, maybe because of some of the trends that are. This is a part of research and development, basically. And so, and two, I want you to talk a little bit later about how it. How. No, how having this knowledge helps people.
Like, in practical terms. I mean, you might as well ask you that now. How does it help people? How is it being used? Like, let's say somebody has a stroke and they come in.
How is this information used?
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question.
Recovery from stroke is completely dependent on neuroplasticity. How much you're going to recover depends. And there's a number of factors that are going to factor into this. Your age, for example, the younger you are, the more available neuroplasticity might be. And so you might see better recovery to after suffering the same kind of damage in a younger person versus an older person. Right. So there are a number of things that you can do to sort of increase your chances of being able to access these neuroplastic kind of mechanisms.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: I had a student last year, and I didn't think about her until just now when we were talking about stroke. She had a stroke and you hardly ever hear, I mean, I don't, in the many years I've worked here, I don't think I've ever had a student who's had a stroke. And she had, she had Covid when it was really bad and it caused her to have a stroke.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: And she had to do, I guess, rehab, you know, and I never asked her this, but I would be curious to know if she had. You know, she was a research participant because of her age.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Because it is not. I wouldn't think it would be common. But she's, you know, she's doing great. I mean, she's really doing great. You can tell just a little bit with her speech, but not much. But as far as her thinking, I think it, you know, it's exactly what you said. Because of her age, maybe she was able to bounce back quicker.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's. That's pretty typically the case, yeah.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Okay, let's take our first break, and then when we come back, less. I'm gonna look at the email question and we'll take that spontaneously, if you don't mind.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Sound good? Okay. We'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7, the Capstone.
[00:15:37] Speaker C: Wvuafm tuscaloosa.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listeners. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863 if you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Gunther and we're talking tonight about a newer topic for me and for the show, neuroplasticity. But it's fascinating. I feel like it's a science that maybe a lot of people don't know about or don't really research, maybe in the fields of psychology and medicine, definitely it's more, you know, prevalent. Doctor. Doctor Brock Kerwin is our guest tonight. He is at the University of Pennsylvania, basically doing research on this topic. And how long have you been doing research, did you say when I asked when you introduced yourself?
[00:17:02] Speaker C: I think a while. So, yeah, so I've all told, probably about 20 years or so.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: You've seen a lot of trends, a lot of growth in this area, no pun intended, and probably a lot of hopeful research that's been done. Was I correct in saying that mostly you're going to see neuroplasticity as a subject or as a research project through psychology? Or is it with psychology and medical.
[00:17:35] Speaker C: Students also a little of both, yeah. Yeah. So you're going to see it in both fields. Psychologists are going to be interested from, well, from a couple of perspectives, from sort of the basic science perspective of how does the brain change over time? Is definitely a perennial research topic. But also, like, if you're, if you're interested in things like treatment and clinical psychology and psychotherapy and things like that. So theories have changed. These are rooted in how your brain changes. So your behavioral changes that you may be hoping to get out of therapy are going to be rooted in neuroplastic changes. And then on the medical side, there's a lot of interest in recovery after brain damage, recovery after stroke, after traumatic brain injury, and then neuro psychological disorders, things like dementias or epilepsy or other neurodegenerative disorders.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Seizures. I mean, I've had students who have had seizures that couldn't be identified as epileptic, and so they just. I forgot what the diagnosis was. Just basically, we don't know what's causing the seizures.
And I would think that would be there's so many neurological disorders and Catherine, I'm sorry, I didn't ignore you, but she was holding, holding up the sign to remind people. If you're listening and you have ideas for topics for upcoming shows, email those to us at brainmattersradiofm ua.edu. what about. Are there. I read, when I read one of the articles, it mentioned different types of neuroplasticity. Are there different types?
[00:19:23] Speaker C: Yes. I mean, neuroplasticity is kind of an umbrella term, right? So anytime you see changes in neuropathy, neural structure, function, connections, all of those fall under the term neuroplasticity. Okay, so each of those different types would count. Right. So if you see branching of axons into areas that may have been damaged in order to sort of recover from injury, that counts as neuroplasticity. Strengthening of synapses that are already there is neuroplasticity. So, yeah. Any change in the structure or function of the neurons counts.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Let me get to the first email question. We touched on it just a little bit, but we may want to go more in depth. How does your brain work when confronted with absorbing new information of something traumatic?
[00:20:16] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[00:20:21] Speaker C: And something that's definitely, you know, clinically relevant.
So the brain is really good at picking up things, particularly during a stressful situation. So traumatic events often are accompanied by high arousal. So you activate the fight or flights system.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: And what we've found.
Research has found that acutely, you see better performance in a whole host of cognitive domains.
When you're in that kind of stressed situation, in that stressed state, you have better memory processing, for sure, but also higher attention, better visual acuity, faster processing speeds. All of these things get a boost from the stress hormones from cortisol and adrenaline, which all makes sense, because if you're in that stressful situation, say you're hiking along, you come around the corner of the trail, there's a bear.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: That has happened to me.
[00:21:36] Speaker C: Me too. Right. And I'm. I'm pretty sure that if you're like me, you remember everything about that episode.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: Oh, I remember the smell.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: Yes, yes, exactly.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: That's how close I was.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: Yes. So the, this is adaptive from an evolutionary perspective, because if you smell that again, you know to turn around and go the other direction. Right.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: So don't run.
[00:22:00] Speaker C: Don't run, exactly. Quietly, but back away. Exactly. Right.
And that's going to increase your survival prospects. Right. So if you remember the bad things, hopefully you can avoid them in the future. Right. So, during the acute phase, it makes a lot of sense for your brain to be. To be very active and to have lots of, and it promotes lots of neuroplasticity. There's lots of growth factors that happen as a consequence of these stress hormones. Now, the problem comes in if you're chronically stressed, there's an inverted U shaped function where there's a sweet spot of acute stress, where you get better performance. But if the stressor lasts for too long, what we see is a reversal of all of those processes, where we see the brain area that I study is called the hippocampus. It's involved in learning a memory. Those cells, those neurons in the hippocampus will start to die. You'll see a retraction of their dendrites on those cells. You'll see worse memory performance over time, as the chronic stressor lasts for weeks, into months, potentially even into years.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: So you're saying if the person cause. The next question is exactly what you just were saying. If that person is still exposed to that trauma. Trauma over time, then these cells can die.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Is that considered. Maybe this is dramatic. Would that be considered brain damage?
[00:23:40] Speaker C: It's a form of brain damage, yeah.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: That'S what it sounds like, yes. What's the answer for that? I mean, obviously, get away from the stressor.
[00:23:50] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Remove the stressor.
There's. Oh, I'm. So there have been research studies looking at major depressive disorder as a form of a stressor. So what we find is that the longer someone goes with untreated major depressive disorder, the lower the hippocampal volume. So there's sort of a linear relationship between these things. Now, fortunately, the things that we know that are beneficial for treating depression are also beneficial for hippocampal growth and neuroplasticity in the hippocampus. Things like exercise, antidepressant medications, SSRI's, things like that, have all been shown to increase hippocampal volume as well. It's not like these changes are permanent. They can be reversed?
[00:24:46] Speaker B: They can be. Okay, that was my next question. Can they be reversed?
[00:24:49] Speaker C: To some extent, you can see some reversal of these symptoms? Yes.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: What about environment?
How much does lifestyle, diet, environment, sleep? I read a lot about sleep.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: How much does all of that? You know, it obviously impacts your brain.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: But I did a show last week on sleep deprivation, and one of the things I mentioned, we talked about was how it affects just your ability to function, but how does it affect your actual brain functioning? And is that permanent?
[00:25:33] Speaker C: Yeah. So sleep deprivation. So the first part of your question was about environment. There are lots of environmental factors that have been shown to have an influence on neuroplasticity, sleep being one of them. So sleep deprivation has an impact on your ability to learn new information, on your attention and focus. The longer you go without sleep, the harder it is to maintain vigilance and attention.
The more well rested you are, the better you are at learning new information. In fact, during sleep, we see sleep dependent consolidation, where you are strengthening memory representations. During sleep, different types of memories, memory for facts and events, gets benefited by different stages of sleep. Slow wave sleep is beneficial for fact and event memory, whereas REM sleep, when you're usually dreaming, is beneficial for more muscle memory kinds of things, more.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Your procedural types of memory is benefited by REM sleep. So good quality sleep is actually really important for neuroplasticity. Neuroplastic mechanisms.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Does diet affect the brain changes? I guess, sure.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, it does. Diet is, is kind of an interesting relationship. So the research that I've read on this indicates that an antioxidant diet is important because it reduces inflammation in the brain. But it turns out that some amount of inflammation is actually beneficial for neuroplasticity. So if you're taking anti inflammatory medications, if you take too much, you actually see a reduction in neuroplasticity. You would have to go well beyond, like ibuprofen, for example, is an anti inflammatory.
So the research that I, that I've looked at for this, the dosages that they're giving are like twice the daily recommended allowance of ibuprofen. So you would really have to. Acting out? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Wow, that's interesting.
It's like you have to have a happy medium.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: It's a balance, basically.
Hey, listen, take our next break, and then when we come back, I've got some more, well, a lot more questions, but about substance use or substance abuse, because we, I do have some students who participate in libations, and so I want to talk about that. We'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7 the capstone.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Wvuafm tuscaloosa.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863 if you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: You're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the capstone. I'm Doctor BJ Guenthereze, talking tonight about neuroplasticity. And my guest is Doctor Brock Kerwin. And we left off really talking about not only trends in lifestyle changes that you can make, sleep, diet. I was really surprised at the diet that you could actually change to affect this. But it just makes sense, really, you know, because there's so much that is affected by inflammation. You mentioned that.
What are benefits? Have we already covered that? Benefits of neuroplasticity, of knowing this information? I mean, I guess you could do something before, you could make some lifestyle changes before anything happens, right?
[00:29:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah. That seems to be the major benefit to somebody in early adulthood. Right. So college age students who are relatively healthy, they're not going to necessarily need neuroplasticity right away.
But what you can be doing early on is building up what's called a cognitive reserve. So the more education someone attains in their lifetime, the lower their likelihood of developing Alzheimer's and other dementias later on in life. So this is one of the protective factors, one of the lifestyle things that we see as a protective factor. Another very consistent, probably the most consistent thing that we see in large epidemiological studies of dementia risk is exercise level so if you're engaging in exercise early on, that that is actually helping to build up your physical health. Yeah. Your reserves and your cognitive reserves builds up your brain health for later on.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Is it really true that I've read this, but is it really true that you can do certain kinds of brain games and it really works, like, you know, crossword puzzles or, I don't know, candy crush, maybe June's journey?
[00:31:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, these are. These are I. Yeah. So the evidence on this is a little bit mixed, and it kind of depends on what you're looking at. So, the evidence for brain training games says that the more that you practice these brain training games, the better you get at brain training games.
Right.
Yeah. So you can show improvements, but they don't necessarily transfer. So if I'm teaching a class this semester and I want to memorize my students names, doing brain training games is not necessarily going to help me remember myself.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Are there limitations to brain plasticity?
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Yes, there are.
So often when we're talking about brain plasticity, we're talking about things like recovery of function.
If I have a stroke that affects my speech centers in my left hemisphere, which is usually my speech hemisphere, my right hemisphere can take over some of those functions. This is one of the more dramatic reorganizations that we see due to neuroplastic changes. Yeah. After brain damage and recovery. Now, that's because my left hemisphere and my right hemisphere are kind of similar, and they're involved in similar processes. It's not gonna be the case that, like, my frontal lobes are gonna take over function that my occipital lobe was doing. Right. So there's more specialization going on there. So that's one of the limitations is that some of the functions are not gonna. Just because you've got an intact brain region doesn't mean that it's going to be a general purpose.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Exactly, yeah.
Do you see many athletes?
[00:33:19] Speaker C: Not a ton in my research, yeah.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Just curious about, you know, concussions, and everybody's kind of talking about concussions, and I just wondered about that.
[00:33:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely an area of active research. We don't know a lot. And a lot of the problem is there are sampling problems, looking at things like concussion and CTE, for example.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:48] Speaker C: Like, a lot of what we have learned about CTE come from people who've had lots and lots of concussions throughout their lives, maybe these smaller concussions, and then developed behavioral problems. And then when we look at those brains, there's definitely evidence of damage that has occurred. The problem is that we don't really have a great baseline to compare that against. So are there other people who've also had lots and lots of concussion, played a lot of football, but not developed brain or behavioral problems? We don't know what those brains look like. Right.
Because those folks aren't donating their brains to science. And so there's lots that we still don't know about what the effects of concussion are on the brain.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Well, before we went to the break, I mentioned substance use or substance abuse, you know, and I remember, I'll never forget working with a psychologist for a program that I was like the program director for, for teenagers. It was like a day treatment program.
And, you know, they would come during the daytime and then they wouldn't spend the night, in case you're listening and you don't know.
And I remember having a guy and he teenager, he smoked a lot of pot, he smoked a lot of weed. And he.
I saw him again, make a long story short, they did an IQ test. He was very smart, very intelligent, had a scholarship, a full ride to a college. And I saw him again in a couple of years and he really kind of. He acted differently. And he came back into the program.
Cause the age range was like twelve to 18. And they did another test on him and his IQ dropped several points, which they told me was really. You didn't really hear of that?
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: And it shocked me. I don't think he cared, to be honest.
I don't know if he absorbed it to be what we were saying to him. It left a real impression on me. So what's your take on something like that? Have you heard of that before? Or what's your opinion? I guess based on research about substance abuse and neuroplasticity?
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah, this is actually a really interesting area. It's not necessarily my area of expertise.
My understanding is that there's, well, there's a lot of active research going on, on this, particularly in the area of hallucinogenics and the potential of hallucinogenics as a treatment mechanism for things like intractable depression and things like that.
So there's a lot of research going on on this. And the idea seems to be that often what happens with these hallucinogenics is that they'll reset, they'll cause a reset of synaptic connections within the brain. So that if you're also at the same time going through therapy like psychotherapy or something like that, that it'll allows you to sort of reestablish thought patterns and have fewer negative thought patterns and have more positive thought patterns, things like that. And that's through this neuroplastic mechanism of resetting these synaptic connects. There may be some therapeutic, beneficial things in addition to some of the horror stories that we hear. Like the one that you mentioned.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we did a show, in fact, on hallucinogenics as it relates to depression and some other, you know, disorders or situations. And we had a therapist on who utilizes the hallucinogenics, whether. I mean, it's controversial, I get that. That's part of the fun of doing the show like that, but, you know, he talked about ketamine therapy. Yeah, I think.
Is it psyllium? Am I saying that right?
LSD, basically, yeah. And so after hearing him, you know, it was fascinating and putting it together with what you just said, it really, if somebody is really, you know, resistant to certain medications, I think they're at a desperate point and they're, they're willing to try another avenue.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And the, the research that I've seen looks really promising.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. I've had one other person, I'll say it that way, who has utilized that, and it worked for her.
So, you know, can't argue with that if they're so depressed that they're in danger of harming themselves, you know, let's take our final break, and when we come back, let's talk about, you know, some resources, maybe for listeners. And I've got a few more questions. So when we come back, we're still talking about neuroplasticity. So hang in there, and we'll take our last break. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7 the capstone.
[00:39:13] Speaker C: Wvuafm tuscaloosa.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863 if you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: You're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Gunther, and we're talking about neuroplasticity. Since the show's called brain matters, this is a great topic. I just thought about that.
And my guest is Doctor Brock Kerwin, who is leading the research at the University of Pennsylvania. It sounds like with this topic is fascinating to me. One of the questions, one of the things I read also in doing research for the show is there are actual physical changes to the brain, which that was kind of. I was a little bit, like, physical. I don't know what I was thinking. I was thinking more like, we talk all the time about chemical changes.
What does that mean? Like, does that mean. Okay. In my mind, I think, is the brain. Brain growing in size or shrinking? You mentioned it shrinking. If somebody is continually exposed to a stimulant or stressor.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. So, yes to all of the above. Your brain changes as you're at a microscopic level. Your brain is changing all the time.
So when you learn new information, if you hang on to that information, the way that the brain encodes that is through a physical change, it's like. Like changing a physical hard drive. Right. So when I. Earlier when I mentioned sleep dependent consolidation, that consolidation process, is your brain physically changing while you're asleep.
So, yeah, your brain physically changes all the time, which is why it, you know, I can't watch movies about so called amnesia because Hollywood always gets it wrong.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Does it exist? Is it real?
[00:41:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: This is your chance to say amnesia.
[00:41:46] Speaker C: Is definitely a thing. Right? So amnesia is where you're unable to form new long term memories. So if you've seen the movie 51st dates, the main character, her depiction is untenable. It's unlikely to happen because she's able to remember things during the day, but then overnight, her sleep gets swiped clean every night. So the physical changes that allow her to remember things during the day get reset overnight. That doesn't happen. That's not what sleep does. Sleep strengthens memories.
If you've seen that movie, there's a character called Ten Second Tom who remembers things for about 10 seconds and then forgets them. That's actually a lot more accurate for what amnesia is like. It's maybe 30 seconds for most, like, densely amnesic patients.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: So is it loss of short term memory?
[00:42:36] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah. That's exactly what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't get from sort of your short term, what you're working with here and now into long term storage. And that's what actual biological amnesia looks like.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
I had a client. The first job I had right out of graduate school was helping to run a program for elderly.
So we had a person who had had a heart attack and his oxygen was cut off. I think that's called apoxia.
[00:43:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Anoxic brain injury or hypoxia. Yep.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Hypoxia. Thank you. And it's been a long day here. Alabama.
He had amazing long term memory. Like, remarkable, but short term memory. It was really sad because he could not, you know, remember from five minutes ago, ten minutes ago, but he could remember 30 years ago.
[00:43:33] Speaker C: Yep.
Yeah.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: That was really the first time I'd ever worked with anybody who had that issue. You know, it was fascinating and sad to see, to me. Honest.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. That's. That's exactly the kind of, like, when I was a postdoctoral scholar, I worked with some amnesiac patients, and they were exactly that same way with toxic brain injury.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: And it really doesn't improve.
[00:43:59] Speaker C: It. It doesn't.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: No, I didn't see that, you know?
[00:44:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So. And that gets back to that idea that we were talking about, that recovery of function, the hippocampus, the part of the brain that was damaged in those cases is so specialized that there's not other brain regions that can take over for that. For that brain region after damage is what it is.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
Is there a way to prevent decline?
Like vitamins, these commercials you see for. I can't remember the medication or the supplement, but I wonder.
[00:44:32] Speaker C: Right, yeah. Yeah. That's literally a billion dollar question.
The most consistent, as I mentioned earlier, the most consistent thing that we see is exercise is the best way to prevent cognitive decline later on in life. So the recommendations that my colleagues give is to stay active, physically, socially, and mentally. So all of those things have neuroprotective effects. As we get older, it really matters.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Like, it's not just something your doctor is preaching to you every year.
[00:45:02] Speaker C: The literature, the science backs it up all the time. And I wish that there was a pill that would be so much more convenient if I could take a pill instead of.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it would be. Wouldn't it be wonderful?
Do you have any resources for listeners? Like, any podcast, any books, any apps, any websites? Yeah.
[00:45:22] Speaker C: Great question.
See if they're interested in memory. In particular, I have a colleague who just came out with a book. His name is Taran Ranganath, and his book is called why we remember.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: I haven't read it yet, but I've looked at the table of contents, and it looks really good. And I'm familiar with his research.
He's a great researcher, and so I've highlighted confidence that he would have good stuff in there. Also, a book called in Search of memory by Eric Candel.
Doctor Candel won the Nobel prize in, I think, 2000. So a few years ago for his research on memory, so that's actually a really good one. Really interesting. Told from sort of his perspective as a researcher and as a memory researcher, I tend to avoid podcasts, except ours.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: You listen to this one. Well, there's just too many out there, and some of them are just like people hanging out talking about memory.
[00:46:33] Speaker C: Right, exactly.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Two friends down in the basement talking about forgetting.
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Right. Yeah, I like the ones. I like the ones where, you know, not that I'm claiming to be any sort of expert, but I. The ones where people are talking about the things that they know something about. Right. So.
And that seems to be a problem with neuroplasticity in particular, is that there are a lot of overblown claims that sort of get hyped in.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: Well, you are an expert.
You've been doing this for 20 years. I don't know what else you would call yourself, you know? Yeah. What about any websites we can go to? Any associations or anything that would have information?
[00:47:12] Speaker C: The Alzheimer's association is really good. If you're interested in dementias and Alzheimer's research.
The Dana Foundation, a brain research foundation.
The president of the foundation is, I guess, caveat. I went to grad school with the president of the foundation, but they do support a lot of research. They support research on the brain and give out grants and fellowships for brain research. So they've got a lot of good research resources on their website.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: It's got me curious as to what if we do any kind of research like that here in our psychology department. I got my degree here, but things have changed, you know, of course, since I've gotten my degree here, but surely they do, you know.
[00:48:07] Speaker C: Yes, I happen to know this. I visited University of Alabama earlier this year and gave a colloquium talk there and got to tour the new MRI facility. So you have on campus there a beautiful new MRI facility. So there's active research going on.
Yeah, yeah. It seems like a really great group, particularly looking at older adults and sort of cognitive aging in older adults. A lot of great research going on.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Thank goodness. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's hopeful. And I like being on the cusp, you know, of research. That's close. That's coming for us, too, you know. Thank you so much for being on the show. This has gone by fast.
[00:48:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it has.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: It really has. I really appreciate it. This is a fascinating topic, one that probably we'll have on again at some point. Maybe some, maybe a little more specific. I like to do that sometimes, you know, revisit memory and cognition. That's fascinating. I think that's what drew me to psychology in the first place. Do you have your degrees in social work? But you probably took many classes about the brain, cognition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But thank you again for being on the show. I know you're an hour ahead, it's eastern time, so I appreciate it you staying a little bit later to be on the show. And like I said, this will be. Don't forget our shows are recorded and podcasted on Apple podcasts, audioboom.com, and voices ua.edu. just type in our show brain matters and you'll find some of our past shows. There's also a link on the counseling center's website at counseling ua.edu. and that's a link to voices ua.edu. and I always like to give a shout out and thank the people who've made the show possible. As always, I'd like to thank doctor Greg Vanderwal. He's our executive director here at the counseling center. My producer, Katherine Howell, and my colleagues here at counseling center, Katherine Ratchford is the student who is in charge of production and edits the shows for us at WVUA, and of course, the VUA staff and my guest tonight, doctor Brock Kerwin. Don't forget we're on again next week. Our topic is going to be a timely one. I think it's the epidemic of loneliness. So join us next week. We'll be here same time, same place. Have a good evening. Good night.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: This show was not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions, and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions, or conclusions shared on the show do not create a relationship between the host or any guest and any listener, and such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you're in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, please contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863 if you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
