Day 7

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Today, I dedicated my time to work on my draft proposal and mini presentation that are due on Thursday and Friday, respectively. I struggled to figure out what the components of the question proposal draft should be, so I went to Matt Sargent to get a Question Plan sheet. I didn't know if we were supposed to answer each question individually exactly as the sheet said, so I decided to make an outline using the questions as a guidelines, only. I worked for 2 hours on my outline. I was relieved to find that we got an extension for the draft proposal, as I need clarification on what exactly the structure and content of the plan should be.

I met with Adrienne Bosworth, as she is also interested in the study of addictions. She recommended that I should look up articles from the journal called Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, which I already looked at but I will definitely expand my research on that journal. We talked about the wording of my question, and in total, the meeting extended to an hour.

I started looking for options for my co-curricular activities to relate to my question, and researched on that for about 45 minutes. I found the website for the Squamish Helping Hands Society to be really useful, as they take volunteers all year round with a one step process of filling in a single application.

Altogether, I found today not to be as productive as I wished it would be, but getting clarification in class tomorrow on the question proposal draft will definitely help. Also, I hope I don't get in trouble for distributing the Question Plan that Matt Sargent sent me (Note to self: apologize to Brian. I'm sorry, Brian).

Day 6

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Today, I spent my time outside of class working on getting my annotated bibliography and seminal works prepared. I started working on my annotated bibliography in the morning, and spent about half an hour researching on APA and MLA style, as I was not sure as to which one was more suitable for my field of study. I started skimming through my pile of 15 books from the SFU and QUC library with the purpose of categorizing the different areas of study that they covered. I came up with the following categories:

• Molecular biology of drugs
• Effects of drugs in the state of consciousness
• Personal accounts of drug addicts
• Psychology of drugs

From here, I e-mailed Neal to ask for suggestions for seminal works. He provided me with the name of one scientist, Eric J. Nestler, who especializes in the study of drug addiction and reward using animal models. He suggested that I looked up peer reviewed papers by him and decide on a collection of 2 to 4 articles for one seminal work. It took me about two and a half hours to decide on which papers to use, as they are more technical than descriptive. I decided to choose one paper relevant to one aspect of drug addiction: One focused on the self administration of cocaine in roedents, one focused on a transcription mechanism of a specific gene and its relationship to drug dependence and finally one focused on the molecular basis and mechanisms of drugs. I also worked on individual outlines of the most important findings and conclusions of the papers in order to get familiarized with the technical terms and also to come up with points of clarification for my next meeting with Neal. Finally, I worked for about 4 hours on writing my annotated bibliography and descriptions on the seminal works.

Day 5

Monday March 21, 2011

Victoria and I decided to change scenarios and go work at the coffee shop in Squamish. We asked each other feedback on the wording of our questions (or tentative questions...). I got significant feedback, and she reinforced my original idea that I need to reword my question. I am thinking: When does reward become addiction? But I wouldn't want to have an assumption in my question (that reward will always lead to/become an addiction.

We worked on our experiential learning forms for about 3 hours, doing research on potential places where I could go to gain experience in any of my fields of interest. I thought of looking up internships of volunteer opportunities at mental institutions, but my main interest would be to be able to participate and do research at a laboratory (preferably with research dedicated specifically to addictions). I asked Neal if he knew about any, and he has actually worked with Eric J. Nestler. The Nestler laboratory of addictions dedicates their research almost entirely to addictive behaviors, which would be great for me. I really want to look into it, even though it's apparently a very competitive internship to get. Another down side is that, as a research assistant at that lab, the meetings are biweekly and sometimes once during the weekend. They also require the lab assistants stay a minimum of 4 months, so I would have to go for the whole summer. I would also have to find a suitable way to decide how many blocks this experiential learning would count for, as we would meet up to 3 times a week for 4 months.

After working on the experiential learning forms, I met with Brian and apparently I am keeping up with the pace of the course and I have been investing time in useful research. I am very motivated to keep on exploring other opportunities for internships. 

I met with Neal to discuss my seminal works. From all the books I picked from SFU, Neal suggested that I picked 4 and then the other seminal work could be a collection of journal articles by an author that specializes on addictions. Neal gave me three names of reasearchers on the topic of addictions, so I looked up their articles on PubMed and Jstor to decide which ones I would use for my seminal works. It took me about 3 hours to examine different research papers from the 3 authors. It was a challenging task as I still have a lot of Molecular Biology and Neuroscience terminology to learn, but I made my decision based on the fact that Eric Nestler bases all his research on roedents rather than humans. The advantage I see in this methodology is that many of those experiments suggest that rats often self administer drugs (such as cocaine) and trigger specific brain structures when they do so. This, to some extent, reduces the subjectivity of a conscious and human decision to take the drug; instead, the rats take the drug affects the animal in a similar way that water affects a thirsty animal, or food affects a hungry one.

Day 4

Sunday March 20, 2011

Today I spent about 4 hours just formulating questions that might arise from my question, or simply questions that I'd like to answer at some point. I researched each question briefly in order to keep my ideas in order.

1. Are we innately attracted to certain traits? (Eg. I read this study on how men apparently are attracted to certain characteristics in women, such as big eyes, small nose and big mouth, dilated pupils, etc.) I could try to relate this question to the aspect of pleasure.
2. Do we get a feeling of reward from seeing beauty in others? This one might not be a valid question at all... What is a feeling of reward? Or what fires up in our brains when we see something "beautiful"? But then again, what is beauty? Maybe I don't want to go there.
3. Do we get a feeling of reward from looking/feeling beautiful? Same issue as the last question. I don't think beauty is an essential part of my question, but I'd like to research it at some point. Maybe by taking a course like love and lust.
4. In what ways is money rewarding? This is actually a big one for me, I can't forget. I've read studies that suggest that earning money triggers the same brain mechanisms that cocaine does. The same brain structures and functions are activated... Is money a drug, in terms of the effects of the brain? Addiction to (making) money?
5. Is money as effective as an excitatory drug in inducing pleasure?
6. How can we alter our state of mind to recreate the effect of drugs without actually taking drugs? I think that this question can be explored in terms of mind control from subjects as religion studies, maybe Buddhism and how their brains work...but it's not really vitally relevant to what I want to do.
7. In what ways is music rewarding? This is also a big one for me. I'd like to see what brain structures are active when we listen to music that we personally like as opposed to music that we don't like. Then again those structures might be the same ones as they are both auditory inputs that are processed by the same structures...
8. Is happiness a mental disease? *I love this one*. Initially I wanted to focus my question around mental diseases instead of addictions, but I don't think I want to go into the area of psychiatry/psychology anymore... Maybe if I relate happiness to addictions and pleasures. Are pleasures necessary for happiness? I'd have to define pleasure AND happiness first. I should do that soon.
9. What is an effective treatment for addictions? This is definitely a big part of my question and I'm expanding on this soon.
10. Which brain structures make up our reward system/pathways? I have some ideas on this: Nucleus accumbens, VTA, limbic system, etc. I need to research on this too.
11. Is there such a thing as a psychological addiction? For example, if a person starts smoking and their brain structures have not adapted to the intake of nicotine, can the person be psychologically addicted? Can the mind (psych) trick the body into thinking it is addicted?
12. Are addictions limited to a biological structure? And by this I mean, does your brain have to be modified by the recurring intake of drugs in order to become addicted? or... in what stage of a drug habit do you become addicted? Are there any drugs that you get addicted to after trying them ONCE? (Like the concept/rumor that you become addicted to cocaine after the first time you try it...)

I realize that all these questions are not worded very smartly but they will serve me as reminders of ideas that I want to explore later on.

Day 3

Saturday March 19, 2011

Today I headed up to the library to see if I could find more suitable books to my question apart from the ones I got at SFU. I made a list of the most important keywords that I have based by research on:

Biology, neuroscience, psychology, neuropsychology, biopsychology, pharmacology, pharmacodynamics, social neuroscience, neurochemistry, neuropsychopharmacology, neural mechanisms, neurobiology, drug therapy, drug tratment, cognitive mechanisms, molecular biology, epigenetics.

I found 3 books that I consider will be useful, I skimmed through them for an hour.

I came across the area of Biosocial criminology, and I spent about 1 hour researching on the topic. There are not many peer reviewed articles on the area, as it started emerging until fairly recently. There are articles on biomedical experiments that seek a genetic predisposition to social issues that relate to crime, including anger and aggression. During my research, I also went back to my neuroscience notes and recalled some structures of the brain that relate to aggression, such as the amygdala, are also closely related to fight vs. flight reactions and fear. I'd like to explore the role of emotions in addictions.

I spent two hours researching on the field of epigenetics. My background on this subject comes from Neuroscience, and I find it really interesting as it is a relatively new field of study; therefore, the research that is being done on it is rapidly changing and increasing. This is also a negative aspect, nonetheless, as there are not many peer reviewed articles on epigenetics and addictions. I would like to incorporate this area to my question as I feel like it would be important in order to study the hereditary aspects of addictions (if there are any).

Day 2

Friday, March 18, 2011

I set up a meeting with Neal in order to talk about the components of my question. I was not sure about the actual fields of study that I should aim to explore throughout my concentration years. I want to focus in neuroscience, neurobiology and all the subjects that relate directly to the brain, but I know that I need the social/ethical/psychological aspects of addictions in order to answer my question thoroughly. I worked on an outline (on paper) for about 2 hours to take to my meeting with Neal so he could see my interests and hopefully suggest some good areas of study that I could focus on apart from the biological perspective. We met for a 45 minute lunch in which we talked about the different areas of study that I should include in my question. First of all, I realized that there is so much more to addictions than just neural networks firing up. The concept of “addictive personalities” came up in the discussion, and I am interested in exploring what makes a personality addictive. I feel like right now I'm too biased towards the deterministic aspect of things, I'd like to think that our personalities are a direct result of stuff happening in our brains and that brain = mind, mind controls personality, personality makes us, us. 

But I know that's not how it works. Cultural norms, social constructs, *decision-making*. What drives our decision making though? Where do we find the balance between our environments and our intrinsic motivations and our brains firing up stuff in order to make a decision?

Talking to Neal was really helpful because we had a good talk on the social aspects of addictions. In psychiatry, an addiction is defined as a habit that is taken to the point that it interferes with our everyday lives. However, there are successful people that have families, jobs, hobbies, and still could be categorized as having a drinking problem in relationship to what an average person drinks. "A person that drinks in a night what I drink in one year can still go to work and have a family". Does this mean that this person is not addicted to alcohol? Have their brains been modified in a way that they NEED alcohol to function right? What does this all mean?!!?

I've decided I need to take into account the concepts of motivation, somehow find a way to integrate the concept of "coping mechanisms" in my question.

I read two chapters of The neurobiology of addiction, by Robbins, Everitt & Nutt (2010), and I spent a total of 3 hours going over this book. I read about a series of theories that integrate motivation and drug use/abuse and I am not sure how much I want to talk about motivations, as it abstract and hard to quantify or describe in scientific terms.

 

Day 1

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Today, I will begin to record the activities and time spent out of class working on the building bases and development of my question. Today, I worked on the different criteria that needs to be defined in order to come up with a question.

1. Defining the components of the question:

• What is reward?
• I spent about 30 minutes researching on what the word 'reward' actually means. It is a concept that comes up in different disciplines, including business, psychology, neurology, etc. I tried to come up with my own definition of the word for my question.
  • Reward: The result of experimenting pleasure and its effects on human behaviour.
• I spent another 30 min. researching on the concept of pleasure. However, it is very subjective, and I can't quite figure out how I want to relate it to my question. I also looked up definitions of the word, but none of them really suffice the expectations of my question.
  • It is necessary to define what pleasure is in order to pinpoint its biological explanation.
  • Pleasure, in the biological sense, relates to the secretion of specific neurotransmitters and hormones in the human body.
  • Pleasure, in the philosophical sense, I still can't define. (Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit – Chapter on “Pleasure and Necessity” could be a useful reading. I spent about 45 min. before going to bed reading the chapter over and over, it took me about 3 times of reading each sentence out loud to get a grasp of what each sentence means.) I don't really want to go into philosophy...Maybe I can run away from it forever?)
• One of my personal goals is to integrate biological and psychological explanations of reward, pleasure and addictions. I'm also aiming to define the differences between those three key terms.

2. Related ideas

• What is the role of our brain's “reward system” in evolutionary terms?
• Is human behaviour driven by reward/pleasure? If so, to what extent?
• The concept of epigenetics refers to the study of the inheritance of characteristics that are not embedded in the DNA sequences. This concept has been widely researched until recently, but it could provide an effective way to study the way that addictions might be passed on to offspring. I spent about an hour looking up peer reviewed articles on the subject, however, I found out I'm not quite ready to understand the technical aspects of the area. It really interests me, though.
  • Is it possible to inherit traits that make us more prone to fall into addictions?
  • Is it possible to be born with an addiction? If not, what triggers an addiction?
• What is vice? (Possibly explore this concept in the philosophical sense)
• How does the use of recreational drugs affect the reward system in our brains?
• How effective is the use of drugs to treat drug addiction?
• Material possessions and reward: What is the effect of earning money in the brain?
• Addictive personalities (?): Compulsive eating, gambling, smoking.

I spent about an hour looking up and reading peer reviewed papers using keywords from the questions above and came up with a rough outline of related questions that I'd like to explore.

3. Relevant disciplines

• Biology: The study of the etiology, development and distribution of living organisms.
• Neuroscience: The study of the nervous system.
• Psychology: The study of human behaviour.
• Neuropsychology: The study of the relationship between structure and function of the brain.
• Biopsychology: The study of the effect of neurotransmitters and other brain structures in human behaviour.
• Pharmacology: The study of the effects of drugs in the human body.
• Social neuroscience: The study of the nervous, endocrine and immune systems are involved in human behaviour.

4. Possible advisors/conversants

• Annie: Molecular biology, the branch of epigenetics specifically.
• Neal: Neuroscience/ Molecular biology
• Megan: Psychology