Interesting Brain Research Studies

1. List three research studies from our readings or other sources which you have found interesting. Briefly summarize the study and discuss why you consider the study important.

I am very intrigued with the brain. My first and favorite research studies in psychology heretofore are the neuroscientific studies of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), scientific exploration that examines the relationship between the mind and the body’s immune system. At the University of Rochester, around 1970, Dr Robert Ader, Professor of Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Rochester found a breakthrough, with an experiment involving rats, saccharine-sweetened water mixed with a nausea-producing drug Cytoxan. These rats learned to relate the drug water with the nausea it produced. When the drug was removed the rats still got nauseous. Now the drug was not the source of the nausea but now it was a mentally learned response. It was started by the taste of the sweet water. It is like association. This equals that, even though it did not for real. It was all in the mind. It was a learned response, a mentally learned response, triggered by taste. It was all in the rats’ mind. Then next they began dying of infectious disease. (Cytoxan is an anticancer drug designed to suppress the immune system. The rats mind had learned to reproduce the nausea, but they were capable of mentally altering their immune systems. This is something never before thought possible. For humans, it means our consciousness can self-regulate our immune system. This is astounding. Our mind can make a difference in how sick we are or are not. We need to think good healthy thots.

The study by Ader, just confirms what I thot all along that our minds are very powerful and when we make up our minds, it is going to come true, kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, we need to have faith that the best will happen and not the worst. We need to control our thoughts big time! Even manipulate them into thinking positive, staying light hearted and humorous.

Further, my second favorite study was in the 1970’s by Elmer and Alyce Green. They discovered that by using mental imagery, the mind could have an effect on many of the physiological functions of our body with the help of biofeedback machinery. We can also train our minds to voluntarily control our blood pressure, pulse, muscular tension, skin temperature, bowel motility and a lot more activities. They found even a mental image or a thought or an awareness itself can be translated into a physical experience. It would seem that yes the mind was speaking to the body. Our mind is powerful. We should use our mind to have a healthier, better life.

Yes, the autonomic nervous system controlling the automatic physical mechanisms of the body, and the central nervous system has something to do with moving our muscles in our body as well. Both of these systems depend on nerve connections between the brain and body. The brain action matters. We should use our brains to our advantage.

The third study, in the seventy’s Candace Pert, research professor at Georgetown University, discovered proteins/neuropeptides that circulate thru our body constantly, caring messages. This is one more communication system/a mobile one, made by the many cells in the body that act on other cells and our entire system. This is how the brain talks to the immune system, the heart, the kidneys, the glands, each cell and so on, creating a process of full interconnectedness of all systems. Then, Candace Pert found that (thoughts, feelings, visual images) our minds could produce specific detailed neuropeptides that can change our body-part functions/physiology to a specific mental state; a mental event can lead to a physical one. For example if we could control give out and change the negative emotional mindset, then we could do the reverse. Further, we could also then change our mindset from unhealthy and negative to one of health, happiness and wholeness. We must then focus on our inner life development. Mental activity affects depression, or the lack thereof. A nervous mind makes a nervous stomach and a clam mind makes a calm stomach. Dr. Pert even went so far to say that “The mind is the body, the body is the mind” (Dacher, 2006). The condition of our body is a reflection of the condition of our mind. Our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and internal images can change the body and functions and disposition. We need to use our minds to our advantage, and keep a positive success focused mentality to be in good health and balanced.

Peter Schnall, from University of California, Professor of Medicine, has research studies showing that unrelenting stress of negative emotions caused permanent changes in their baseline physiology and the structure of their bodies. (Dacher, 2006 p.18). So, if we have unrelenting, constant stress in our lives, we need to change something, even make a major change if we have to in order to stop damaging our brain and bodies. Get help, get counseling, and find a better way than constant stress. Constant stress can lead to cancer and Alzheimer’s, so don’t let this happen, change your life.

Source:
Dacher, Elliott S. (2006). Integral health: The path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications.