Part 1: Regulation of Body Weight
The fact that the brain controls all bodily functions creates a direct correlation between the psychology and biology. With healthcare focus moving more towards non-communicable diseases, how the brain controls the body has become a major health focus. Key within this area is the issue of obesity, which has become one of the most prevalent and expensive problems in America. Among the areas of interest is what processes of the mind control body weight and obesity. Body weight involves two major aspects to wit what goes into the body on the one part and what happens to it once it is inside the body in the other. When the availability of food is not an issue and the body is healthy, both how much food is ingested and how it gets digested is controlled by the mind through a combination of neurological and chemical processes.
It is in the best interest of the body to maintain a regular body weight, but it does not always succeed. The failure may be caused by the time of food taken, eating habits, a biological disorder, and even a psychological disorder. For a start, the body and the brain need the energy to function and this normally comes from ingested and digested food. Energy in the body is in the form of glucose, a sugar which is made from carbohydrates. Insulin, secreted by the pancreases as controlled by the brain regulates how much carbohydrates will be transformed into sugars. Too much insulin causes too much production of glucose in the body and too little insulin will lead to the production of too much glucose in the body. This makes insulin production one of the ways that the body regulates its weight.
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Insulin at the same time takes care of excess glucose in the body by changing it into glycogen, a complex carbohydrate that is stored in the liver. When there is neither glucose nor carbohydrates to process, the brain will trigger the disappearance of insulin so that glucagon, also secreted by the pancreas can change glycogen back into glucose. However, glucose and glycogen are only short term energy plans with excess energy on a long term basis being stored in the form of fat which is stored in the adipose tissue. The process of making fat is much more complex than that of making glycogen. The brain seeks to study and understand the ingestion patterns of the body as well as the energy needs thereof. It is on this basis that the body determines how much glucose will be converted into glycogen and how much will be converted into fat. Weight regulation is determined by how much fat is present in the body. The brain accurately seeks to establish just how much fat needs to be created to maintain just enough reserve energy in the body without causing obesity. Therefore, whenever obesity happens, something is definitely wrong.
One of the main problems that can cause obesity is the presence of the obesity gene. The obesity gene interferes with the careful balance that controls the creation of fat in the body, leading to the creation of too much fat and the advent of obesity. The second problem that can cause obesity relates to the hormone Leptin, a satiation hormone. It is the work of Leptin to inform the body that it has ingested enough food and thus kill the appetite. Both the obese and those who are not producing a similar amount of Leptin but the obese develop a tolerance to it. This means that albeit Leptin is being produced, the body will keep on ingesting more food making obesity a problem that feeds on itself. The final cause of obesity is an eating disorder that causes an individual to eat even when the brain is sending signals to the contrary
Part Two: Reward and Reinforcement
The human being has a body that is controlled by a brain mainly through the nervous system and also affected by social factors. It is within the field of psychology to understand how the body, the brain, and social aspects interrelate. Among the areas that this relationship is most exhibited relates to rewards and reinforcement. The mesocorticolimbic dopamine (MDA) system is the part of the brain that controls reward and reinforcement. Positive reinforcement mainly emanates from a reward and relates to an activity that produces an effect that is pleasing to an individual. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, happens when the forces hampering an action is removed leading an individual to do something, mostly to adverse consequences. The MDA system, which includes and hormones, controls all forms of reward and reinforcement from eating, sexual pleasure and all forms of addictions. The conditioning of the MDA system from the perspective of reward and reinforcement is affected by cognitive factors, biological factors as well as social factors since it is part of the brain which is by its very nature a learning tool.
When something pleasant happens to the body, it triggers a pleasurable feeling in the brain through the MDA system. The body will then crave for that pleasant thing in pursuit of the reward that produces that pleasurable feeling. One of the most fundamental DA rewards to the body is food. This is based on the fact that food is a fundamental part of the existence of the body since it is a source of nourishment. The second most important thing to the survival of the body is the survival of the species which in human beings is ensured through sex. This makes sex another important DA reward. However, the very same system that is pleasured by food and sex is also pleasured by addictions such as gambling and abuse of narcotics. Indeed, the advent of negative behavioral characteristics such as drug abuse and other addictive behavior has been related to the absence of natural rewards such as food and sex. The secondary and adverse rewards develop as a replacement to the original and normal rewards that have either been reduced or are missing.
A reward, however, can develop into an addiction due to biological and psychological factors, buoyed by social factors. Tolerance is one of the causes of addiction that can take place both to the brain and to the body. For example, a person who takes narcotics will with continued use develop a tolerance for a particular drug as the body becomes numb to the effects of the drugs and/or the DA system becomes numb to the drug. With increased usage, however, it shall get to a point where the body itself cannot survive without the drug, leading to the addiction. On the other part, behavioral addictions such as gambling will only have an effect on the DA system and not the physical body. As the gambling habit grows, the individual gets less pleasure than they used to at the beginning of the habit necessitating more gambling. The need for a larger reward will result in an increased desire for the habit until it finally develops into an addiction. Social factors contributing to the advent and development of addictions include peer pressure, availability of the addictive reward and stress. Elimination of addiction, on the other hand, requires cognitive behavioral therapy to remove the psychological craving for the addictive reward. Secondary biological treatment may, however, necessary for addictions that also affect the physical body such as drug addiction.
Part Three: Schizophrenia
The frontal cortex in humans is much larger and more developed than all the other animals in the world and is the reason for most of the unique mental functions in humans. The capacity for intelligence is one of the functions of the frontal lobe. This entails being able to analytically understand situations and establish a variety of solutions to a singular problem. This is also the part that makes the accumulation of knowledge possible, mostly through comprehensive communication. The intelligence within humans, mainly made possible by the frontal cortex includes fluid intelligence which relates to the use of logic and also crystalline intelligence which relates to learned knowledge such as education. Finally, the frontal lobe is involved in the learning of behavior while the prefrontal cortex is involved in the control of facial expression and mimicking of behavior.
Schizophrenia as a mental condition is so complex that much is what is known about it has yet to be established and is thus limited to the hypothesis. Neurodevelopmental hypothesis (NDH) of schizophrenia relates to the theory that schizophrenia develops as a result of a disruption of brain development during early life. This may have been caused by the physical trauma of asphyxiation. The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, on the other hand, relates to the symptoms of the said condition and relates them to a hyperactive and/or disturbed dopaminergic signal transduction. A kindred hypothesis known as the glutamate hypothesis uses the same concept but focuses on the glutamate and not the dopamine. Other hypotheses are the genetic hypothesis that holds that the illness is caused by genes and the malnutrition hypothesis that blame the advent of schizophrenia to malnutrition by expectant mothers in the first trimester.
The pathophysiology of schizophrenia is extremely diverse as it affects the frontal cortex, in several ways including tissue loss. As shown above, the frontal cortex controls several physical and psychological processes. As shown above, the frontal cortex controls many of the brains activities including the ability to gather knowledge, ability to use that knowledge as well as the ability to reason rationally. The pathophysiology of schizophrenia is both active and passive as it both creates an inability to perform normal functions and also produces abnormal activities. Among the most important normal functions of the human brain is to control normal growth. This is an important aspect of the condition’s pathophysiology that manifests biologically. The shape of the head, the nature of limbs or other body parts may fail to grow normally. Another very visible attribute of the condition relates to facial expression. Many schizophrenics will have the inability to maintain rational facial expression resulting in their faces looking distorted.
Another aspect is the prodromal effects that entail the inability to behave normally. This may include weird character, poor personal hygiene, and social isolation. The second aspect is dubbed positive symptoms and includes hallucinations, thought disorders and being delusional. Negative symptom, on the other hand, includes extreme lethargy at particular times such as early mornings, lack of motivation and diminished motivational expression. Schizophrenia also affects cognitive abilities such as the ability to retain memories, ability to control personality initiated functions and attention deficiency. Motor abilities can also be severely affected, including mundane activities such as standing up, sitting upright and imitating limb functions. Despite being extremely researched, schizophrenia remains one of the least understood of mental ailments. This is in spite of the fact that it is one of the oldest discovered mental ailments and also extremely pronounced.
