As far as science movies go, the new movie, “To Age or Not To Age” seems like a lot of fun.  The interview with Dr. Leonard Guarente suggests that the sirtuin genes play a starring role in the film.  Certainly,  an NAD+ dependent histone deacetylase – makes for a sexy movie star – especially when it is able to sense diet and metabolism and establish the overall lifespan of an organism.

One comment in the movie trailer, by Aubrey de Grey, suggests that humans may someday be able to push the physiology of aging to extreme ends.  That studies of transgenic mice over-expressing SIRT1 showed physiological properties of calorie-restricted (long lived) mice – even when fed ad libitum – suggests that something similar might be possible in humans.

Pop a pill and live it up at your local Denny’s for the next 100 years?  Sounds nice (& a lot like grad school).

Just a few twists to the plot here.  It turns out that – in the brain – SIRT1 may not function as it does in the body.  Here’s a quote from a research article “Neuronal SIRT1 regulates endocrine and behavioral responses to calorie restriction” that inactivated SIRT1 just in the brain:

Our findings suggest that CR triggers a reduction in Sirt1 activity in hypothalamic neurons governing somatotropic signaling to lower this axis, in contrast with the activation of Sirt1 by CR in many other tissues. Sirt1 may have evolved to positively regulate the somatotropic axis, as it does insulin production in β cells, to control mammalian health span and life span in an overarching way. However, the fact that Sirt1 is a positive regulator of the somatotropic axis may complicate attempts to increase murine life span by whole-body activation of this sirtuin.

To a limited extent, it seems that – in the brain – SIRT1 has the normal function of promoting aging.  Therefore, developing “pills” that are activators of SIRT1 would be good for the body, but somehow might be counteracted by what the brain would do.  Who’s in charge anyway?  Mother Nature will not make it easy to cheat her! Another paper published recently also examined the role of SIRT1 in the brain and found that – normally – SIRT1 enhances neuronal plasticity (by blocking the expression of a  micro-RNA miR-134 that binds to the mRNA of, and inhibits the translation of, synaptic plasticity proteins such as CREB).

So, I won’t be first to line up for SIRT1 “activator” pills (such as Resveratrol), but I might pop a few if I’m trying to learn something new.

This post is part of an ongoing exploration of  “mindfulness” biology and the neurobiology of reflecting inwardly on one’s mental life.  I hope it helps support the self-discovery aim of the blog.

In some ways, the 8 limbs of yoga described in the yoga sutras, seem a bit like a ladder, rather than a concentric set of outreached arms or spokes on a wheel.  As I practice this form of postures and mindfulness, it seems like I’m working toward something.  But what?  I certainly feel healthier, and also enjoy the satisfaction of getting slightly more able (ever so slightly) to shift into new postures – so am quite motivated to continue the pursuit.  Perhaps this is how yoga got started eons ago?   Just a pursuit that – by trial and error – left its practitioners feeling more healthy, relaxed and more in touch with their outer and inner worlds?  But where does this path lead, if anywhere?

I was intrigued by a report published in 1973 by an 8-day study carried out on the grounds of the Ravindra Nath Tagore Medical College and Hospital, Udaipur, India and subsequent letter, “The Yogic claim of voluntary control over the heart beat: an unusual demonstration” published in the American Heart Journal, Volume 86 Number 2.  Apparently, a local yogi named Yogi Satyamurti:

Yogi Satyamurti, a sparsely built man of about 60 years of age, remained confined in a small underground pit for 8 days in what according to him was a state of “Samadhi,” or deep meditation, with all bodily activity cut down to the barest minimum.

The medical researchers had the yogi’s heart and other physiological functions under constant watch via electrical recording leads, and watched as the yogi’s heart slowed down (their equipment registered a flatline) a remained so for several days.  Upon opening up the pit, the researchers found:

The Yogi was found sitting in the same posture. One of us immediately went in to examine him. He was in a stuporous condition and was very cold (oral temperature was 34.8O C) [the same temperature as the earth around him].

After a few hours, the yogi had recovered from the experience and displayed normal physiological and behavioral function – despite 8 days underground (air supposedly seeped in from the sides of the pit) with no food or human contact!

An amazing feat indeed – one that has some scientists wondering about the psychology and physiology that occurs when advanced meditators sink into (very deep) states.  John Ding-E Young and Eugene Taylor explored this in an article entitled, “Meditation as a Voluntary Hypometabolic State of Biological Estivation” published in News Physiol. Sci., Volume 13, June 1998.   They  suggest that humans have a kind of latent capacity to enter a kind of dormant or  hibernation-like state that is similar to other mammals and even certain primates.

Meditation, a wakeful hypometabolic state of parasympathetic dominance, is compared with other hypometabolic conditions, such as sleep, hypnosis, and the torpor of hibernation. We conclude that there are many analogies between the physiology of long-term meditators and hibernators across the phylogenetic scale. These analogies further reinforce the idea that plasticity of consciousness remains a key factor in successful biological adaptation.

Practice, practice, practice – towards an ability to engage a latent evolutionary adaptation? Such an adaptation – in humans – sounds hokey, but certainly an interesting idea worth exploring more in the future.

In an earlier post on Williams Syndrome, we delved into the notion that sometimes a genetic variant can lead to enhanced function – such as certain social behaviors in the case of WS.  A mechanism that is thought to underlie this phenomenon has to do with the way in which information processing in the brain is widely distributed and that sometimes a gene variant can impact one processing pathway, while leaving another pathway intact, or even upregulated.  In the case of Williams Syndrome a relatively intact ventral stream (“what”) processing but disrupted dorsal stream (“where”) processing leads to weaker projections to the frontal cortex and amygdala which may facilitate gregarious and prosocial (a lack of fear and inhibition) behavior.  Other developmental disabilities may differentially disrupt these 2 visual information processing pathways.  For instance, developmental dyspraxia contrasts with WS as it differentially disrupts the ventral stream processing pathway.

A recent paper by Woodcock and colleagues in their article, “Dorsal and ventral stream mediated visual processing in genetic subtypes of Prader–Willi syndrome” [doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.09.019] ask how another developmental disability – Prader-Willi syndrome – might differentially influence the development of these information processing pathways.  PWS arises from the lack of expression (via deletion or uniparental disomy) of a cluster of paternally expressed genes in the 15q11-13 region (normally the gene on the maternally inherited chromosome is silent, or imprinted – related post here).  By comparing PWS children to matched controls, the team reports evidence showing that PWS children who carry the deletion are slightly more impaired in a task that depends on the dorsal “where” pathway whilst some sparing or relative strength in the ventral “what” pathway.

This past friday, I attended my first meditation session at my new yoga school.  I love this school and hope – someday – to make it through the full Ashtanga series and other sequences the instructors do.  In the meantime, I found myself sitting on my folded up blanket, letting my mind wander, listening to my breath and just trying to enjoy the moment.

What a wonderful experience it was … it felt great!  … I think I my have even given my brain a rest. A simple kindness to repay it for all it has done for me!

Although I did not know what I was supposed to be “doing” during meditation, the experience itself has me hooked and fascinated with a new research article, “Genetic control over the resting brain” [doi: 10.1073/pnas.0909969107]  by David Glahn and colleages.

Reading this paper, I learned that my brain “at rest” is really very active with neural activity in a series of interconnected circuits known as the default network.  Moreover, the research team finds that many of these interconnected circuits fire together in a way that is significantly influenced by genetic factors (overall heritability of about 0.42).  By analyzing the resting state (lay in the MRI and let your mind wander) patterns of activity in 333 folks from extended pedigrees, the team shows that certain interconnections (neural activity between 2 or more regions) within the default network are more highly correlated in people who are more related to each other.  For example, the left parahippocampal region was genetically correlated with many of the other brain areas in the default network.

Of course, these genetic effects on resting state connectivity are far from determinative, and the authors noted that some interconnections within the default network were more sensitive to environmental factors – such as functional connectivity between right temporal-parietal & posterior cingulate/precuneus & medial prefronal cortex.

Wow, so my resting state activity must – at some level – as a partial product of my genome – be rather unique and special.  It certainly felt that way as my mind wandered freely during meditation class. The authors point out that their heritability study lays more groundwork for follow-up gene hunting expeditions to isolate specific genetic variants.  This will be very exciting!

Some other items from their paper that I’ll be pondering in my next meditation class are the facts that these default neural networks are already present in the infant brain!  and in our non-human primate cousins (even when they are not conscious)!  Whoa!  These genetics & resting-state brain studies will really push our sense of what it means to be human, to be unique, to be interconnected by a common (genetic) thread from generation to generation over vast spatial and temporal distances (is this karma of sorts?).

I suppose yogis & other practitioners of meditation might be bemused at this recent avenue of “cutting edge” scientific inquiry – I mean – duh?!  of course, it makes sense that by remaining calm and sitting quietly that we would discover ourselves.

Related posts here, here, here

If you’ve started to notice the arrival of spring blossoms, you may have wondered, “how do the blossoms know when its spring?“  Well, it turns out that its not the temperature, but rather, that plants sense the length of the day-light cycle in order to synchronize their  own life cycles with the seasons.  According to the photoperiodism entry for wikipedia, “Many flowering plants use a photoreceptor protein, such as phytochrome or cryptochrome, to sense seasonal changes in night length, or photoperiod, which they take as signals to flower.”

It turns out that humans are much the same. Say wha?!

Yep, as the long ago descendants of single cells who had to eek out a living during day (when the sun emits mutagenic UV radiation) and night cycles, our very own basic molecular machinery that regulates the transcription, translation, replication and a host of other cellular functions is remarkably sensitive – entrained – in a clock-like fashion to the rising and setting sun.  This is because, in our retinas, there are light-sensing cells that send signals to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) which then – via the pineal gland – secretes systemic hormones such as melatonin that help synchronize cells and organs in your brain and body.  When this process is disrupted, folks can feel downright lousy, as seen in seasonal affective disorder (SAD), delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) and other circadian rhythm disorders.

If you’re skeptical, consider the effects of genetic variation in genes that regulate our circadian rhythms, often called “clock” genes – very ancient genes that keep our cellular clocks synchronized with each other and the outside environment.  Soria et al., have a great paper entitled, “Differential Association of Circadian Genes with Mood Disorders: CRY1 and NPAS2 are Associated with Unipolar Major Depression and CLOCK and VIP with Bipolar Disorder” [doi: 10.1038/npp.2009.230] wherein they reveal that normal variation in these clock genes is associated with mood regulation.

A few of the highlights reported are rs2287161 in the CRY1 gene,  rs11123857 in the NPAS2 gene, and rs885861 in the VIPR2 gene – where the C-allele, G-allele and C-allele, respectively, were associated with mood disorders.

I’m not sure how one would best interpret genetic variation of such circadian rhythm genes.  Perhaps they index how much a person’s mood could be influenced by changes or disruptions to the normal rhythm??  Not sure.  My 23andMe data shows the non-risk AA genotype for rs11123857 (the others are not covered by 23andMe).

In an effort to discover genes that contribute to individual differences in brain structure, the authors took on the task of statistically analyzing the some 31,622 voxels (per brain) obtained from high-resolution structural brain scans; with 448,293 Illumina SNP genotypes (per person) with minor allele frequencies greater than 0.1 (common variants); in 740 unrelated healthy caucasian adults.  When performed on a voxel-by-voxel basis, this amounts to some 14 billion statistical tests.

Yikes!  A statistical nightmare with plenty of room for false positive results, not to mention the recent disillusionment with the common-variant GWAS approach?  Certainly.  The authors describe these pitfalls and other scenarios wherein false data is likely to arise and most of the paper addresses the pros and cons of different statistical analysis strategies – some which are prohibitive in their computational demands.  Undaunted, the authors describe several approaches for establishing appropriate thresholds and then utilize a ‘winner take all’ analysis strategy wherein a single ‘most-associated winning snp’ is identified for each voxel, which when clustered together in hot spots (at P = 2 x 10e-10), can point to specific brain areas of interest.

Using this analytical approach, the authors report that 8,212 snps were identified as ‘winning, most-associated’ snps across the 31,622 voxels.  They note that there was not as much symmetry with respect to winning snps in the left hemispere and corresponding areas in the right hemisphere, as one might have expected.  The 2 most significant snps across the entire brain and genome were rs2132683 and rs713155 which were associated with white matter near the left posterior lateral ventricle.  Other notable findings were rs2429582 in the synaptic (and possible autism risk factor) CADPS2 gene which was associated with temporal lobe structure and rs9990343 which sits in an intergenic region but is associated with frontal lobe structure.  These and several other notable snps are reported and brain maps are provided that show where in the brain each snp is associated.

As in most genome-wide studies, one can imagine that the authors were initially bewildered by their unexpected findings.  None of the ‘usual suspects’ such as neurotransmitter receptors, transcription factors, etc. etc. that dominate the psychiatric genetics literature.  Bewildered, perhaps, but maybe thats part of the fun and excitement of discovery!  Very exciting stuff to come I’ll bet as this new era unfolds!

Obviously, Wolfe was a gifted artist, despite whatever psychiatric diagnosis was suggested at the time.  Nevertheless, clinical psychiatrists might be quick to point out that such work reflects the presence of an underlying thought disorder (loss of abstraction ability, tangentiality, loose associations, derailment, thought blocking, overinclusive thinking, etc., etc.) – despite the undeniable aesthetic beauty in the work.  As an ardent fan of such art,  it made me wonder just how “well ordered” my own thoughts might be.  Given to being rather forgetful and distractable, I suspect my thinking process is just sufficiently well ordered to perform the routine tasks of day-to-day living, but perhaps not a whole lot more so.  Is this bad or good?  Who knows.

However, Krug et al., in their recent paper, “The effect of Neuregulin 1 on neural correlates of episodic memory encoding and retrieval” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.062] do note that the brains of unaffected relatives of persons with mental illness show subtle differences in various patterns of activation.  It seems that when individuals are using their brains to encode information for memory storage, unaffected relatives show greater activation in areas of the frontal cortex compared to unrelated subjects.  This so-called encoding process during episodic memory is very important for a healthy memory system and its dysfunction is correlated with thought disorders and other aspects of cognitive dysfunction.  Krug et al., proceed to explore this encoding process further and ask if a well-known schizophrenia risk variant (rs35753505 C vs. T) in the neuregulin-1 gene might underlie this phenomenon.  To do this, they asked 34 TT, 32 TC and 28 CC individuals to perform a memory (of faces) game whilst laying in an MRI scanner.

The team reports that there were indeed differences in brain activity during both the encoding (storage) and retrieval (recall) portions of the task – that were both correlated with genotype – and also in which the CC risk genotype was correlated with more (hyper-) activation.  Some of the brain areas that were hyperactivated during encoding and associated with CC genotype were the left middle frontal gyrus (BA 9), the bilateral fusiform gyrus and the left middle occipital gyrus (BA 19).  The left middle occipital gyrus showed gene associated-hyperactivation during recall.  So it seems, that healthy individuals can carry risk for mental illness and that their brains may actually function slightly differently.

As an ardent fan of Art Brut, I confess I hoped I would carry the CC genotype, but alas, my 23andme profile shows a boring TT genotype.  No wonder my artwork sucks.  More on NRG1 here.

** PODCAST accompanies this post**

I have a little boy who loves to run and jump and scream and shout – a lot.  And by this, I mean running – at full speed and smashing his head into my gut,  jumping – off the couch onto my head,  screaming – spontaneous curses and R-rated body parts and bodily functions.  I hope you get the idea.  Is this normal? or (as I oft imagine) will I soon be sitting across the desk from a school psychologist pitching me the merits of an ADHD diagnosis and medication?

Of course, when it comes to behavior, there is not a distinct line one can cross from normal to abnormal.  Human behavior is complex, multi-dimensional and greatly interpreted through the lens of culture.  Our present culture is highly saturated by mass-marketing, making it easy to distort a person’s sense of “what’s normal” and create demand for consumer products that folks don’t really need (eg. psychiatric diagnoses? medications?).   Anyhow, its tough to know what’s normal.  This is an important issue to consider for those (mass-marketing hucksters?) who might be inclined to promote genetic data as “hard evidence” for illness, disorder or abnormality of some sort.

With this in mind, I really enjoyed a recent paper by Stollstorff et al., “Neural response to working memory load varies by dopamine transporter genotype in children” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.104] who asked how the brains of healthy children functioned, even though they carry a genotype that has been widely associated with the risk of ADHD.  Healthy children who carry genetic risk for ADHD. Hmm, might this be my boy?

The researchers looked at a 9- vs. 10-repeat VNTR polymorphism in the 3′-UTR of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1).  This gene – which encodes the very protein that is targeted by so many ADHD medications – influences the re-uptake of dopamine from the synaptic cleft.  In the case of 10/10 genotypes, it seems that DAT1 is more highly expressed, thus leading to more re-uptake and hence less dopamine in the synaptic cleft.  Generally, dopamine is needed to enhance the signal/noise of neurotransmission, so – at the end of the day – the 10/10 genotype is considered less optimal than the 9/9-repeat genotype.  As noted by the researchers, the ADHD literature shows that the 10-repeat allele, not the 9-repeat, is most often associated with ADHD.

The research team asked these healthy children (typically developing children between 7 and 12 years of age) to perform a so-called N-back task which requires that children remember words that are presented to them one-at-a-time.  Each time a new word is presented, the children had to decide whether that word was the same as the previous word (1-back) or the previous, previous word (2-back).  Its a maddening task and places an extreme demand on neural circuits involved in active maintenance of information (frontal cortex) as well as inhibition of irrelevant information that occurs during updating (basal ganglia circuits).

As the DAT1 protein is widely expressed in the basal ganglia, the research team asked where in the brain was variation in the DAT1 (9- vs. 10-repeat) associated with neural activity?  and where was there a further difference between 1-back and 2-back?  Indeed, the team finds that brain activity in many regions of the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, substantia nigra & subthalamic nucleus) were associated with genetic variation in DAT1.  Neat!  the gene may be exerting an influence on brain function (and behavior) in healthy children, even though they do not carry a diagnosis.  Certainly, genes are not destiny, even though they do influence brain and behavior.

What was cooler to me though, is the way the investigators examined the role of genetic variation in the 1-back (easy or low load condition) vs. 2-back (harder, high-load condition) tasks.  Their data shows that there was less of an effect of genotype on brain activation in the easy tasks.  Rather, only when the task was hard, did it become clear that the basal ganglia in the 10/10 carriers was lacking the necessary brain activation needed to perform the more difficult task.  Thus, the investigators reveal that the genetic risk may not be immediately apparent under conditions where heavy “loads” or demands are not placed on the brain.  Cognitive load matters when interpreting genetic data!

This result made me think that genes in the brain might be a lot like genes in muscles.  Individual differences in muscle strength are not associated with genotype when kids are lifting feathers.  Only when kids are actually training and using their muscles, might one start to see that some genetically advantaged kids have muscles that strengthen faster than others.  Does this mean there is a “weak muscle gene” – yes, perhaps.  But with the proper training regimen, children carrying such a “weak muscle gene” would be able to gain plenty of strength.

I guess its off to the mental and physical gyms for me and my son.

** PODCAST accompanies this post** also, here’s a link to the Vaidya lab!

The A-to-T SNP rs7794745 in the CNTNAP2 gene was found to be associated with increased risk of autism (see Arking et al., 2008).  Specifically, the TT genotype, found in about 15% of individuals, increases these folks’ risk by about 1.2-1.7-fold.  Sure enough, when I checked my 23andMe profile, I found that I’m one of these TT risk-bearing individuals.  Interesting, although not alarming since me and my kids are beyond the age where one typically worries about autism.  Still, one can wonder if such a risk factor might have exerted some influence on the development of my brain?

The recent paper by Tan et al., “Normal variation in fronto-occipital circuitry and cerebellar structure with an autism-associated polymorphism of CNTNAP2” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.02.018 ] suggests there may be subtle, but still profound influences of the TT genotype on brain development in healthy individuals.  According to the authors, “homozygotes for the risk allele showed significant reductions in grey and white matter volume and fractional anisotropy in several regions that have already been implicated in ASD, including the cerebellum, fusiform gyrus, occipital and frontal cortices. Male homozygotes for the risk alleles showed greater reductions in grey matter in the right frontal pole and in FA in the right rostral fronto-occipital fasciculus compared to their female counterparts who showed greater reductions in FA of the anterior thalamic radiation.”

The FA (fractional anisotropy – a measurement of white-matter or myelination) results are consistent with a role of CNTNAP2 in the establishment of synaptic contacts and other cell-cell contacts especially at Nodes of Ranvier – which are critical for proper function of white-matter tracts that support rapid, long-range neural transmission.  Indeed, more severe mutations in CNTNAP2  have been associated with cortical dysplasia and focal epilepsy (Strauss et al., 2006).

Subtle changes perhaps influencing long-range information flow in my brain – wow!

More on CNTNAP2 … its evolutionary history and role in language development.

Here’s a great paper, “Association between ADORA2A and DRD2 Polymorphisms and Caffeine-Induced Anxiety” [doi: 10.1038/npp.2008.17] wherein polymorphisms in the adenosine A2A receptor (ADORA2A encodes the protein that caffeine binds to and antagonizes) – as well as the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2 encodes a protein whose downstream signals are normally counteracted by A2A receptors) — show associations with anxiety after the consumption of 150mg of caffeine (about an average cup of coffee – much less than the super-size, super-rich cups that Starbucks sells).  The variants, rs5751876 (T-allele), rs2298383 (T-allele) and rs4822492 (G-allele) from the ADORA2A gene as well as rs1110976 (-/G genotype) from the DRD2 gene showed significant increases in anxiety in a test population of 102 otherwise-healthy light-moderate regular coffee drinkers.

My own 23andMe data only provides a drop of information suggesting I’m protected from the anxiety-promoting effects.  Nevertheless, I’ll avoid the super-sizes.
rs5751876 (T-allele)  C/C – less anxiety
rs2298383 (T-allele) – not covered
rs4822492 (G-allele) – not covered
rs1110976 (-/G genotype) – not covered