Bullying, as it turns out, can literally make your brain change for the worse. \u00a0 This is how bullies extract their toll on the bullied forever…<\/p>\n
The Brain: The Switches That Can Turn Mental Illness On and Off<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
This month’s column is a tale of two rats. One rat got lots of attention from its mother when it was young; she licked its fur many times a day. The other rat had a different experience. Its mother hardly licked its fur at all. The two rats grew up and turned out to be very different. The neglected rat was easily startled by noises. It was reluctant to explore new places. When it experienced stress, it churned out lots of hormones. Meanwhile, the rat that had gotten more attention from its mother was not so easily startled, was more curious, and did not suffer surges of stress hormones.<\/p>\n
The same basic tale has repeated itself hundreds of times in a number of labs. The experiences rats had when they were young altered their behavior as adults. We all intuit that this holds true for people, too, if you replace fur-licking with school, television, family troubles, and all the other experiences that children have. But there’s a major puzzle lurking underneath this seemingly obvious fact of life. Our brains develop according to a recipe encoded in our genes. Each of our brain cells contains the same set of genes we were born with and uses those genes to build proteins and other molecules throughout its life. The sequence of DNA in those genes is pretty much fixed. For experiences to produce long-term changes in how we behave, they must be somehow able to reach into our brains and alter how those genes work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Neuroscientists are now mapping that mechanism…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is interesting on a number of accounts. \u00a0 Firstly, as a gay man, it concerns me how the question of nature verses nurture is dealt with, as it has been a trip point in the culture war for decades now. \u00a0 And as it seems to be turning out more and more, it’s a combination of both. \u00a0 The story here is that genes may say one thing, but the effects of the environment, the physical environment, you grow up in, can overrule them all the same…<\/p>\n
Two families of molecules perform that kind of genetic regulation. One family consists of methyl groups<\/a>, molecular caps made of carbon and hydrogen. A string of methyl groups attached to a gene can prevent a cell from reading its DNA sequence. As a result, the cell can’t produce proteins or other molecules from that particular gene. The other family is made up of coiling proteins<\/a>, molecules that wrap DNA into spools. By tightening the spools, these proteins can hide certain genes; by relaxing the spools, they can allow genes to become active.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How this plays out in terms of one’s sexual orientation fascinated me less then this…<\/p>\n