A recent advance in technology allows researchers to reprogram skin cells from patients and turn them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can then produce any type of cell in the body. They recently took advantage of this new technology by obtaining stem cells from individuals with a genetic mutation that causes them to be more susceptible to schizophrenia, and were able to note problems with nerve developments, which they were then able to link to the gene CYFIP1.
This gene helps to maintain the structure of the nerve cell. When they blocked the expression of the gene in the developing embryos of mice, they were able to detect abnormalities in cerebral cortex formation, which scientists now know plays a role in consciousness. In addition to discovering a mutation in CYFIP, they were able to find two genes within a cellular pathway to which CYFIp1 was linked, which profoundly increased the subject’s risk of schizophrenia, supporting the hypothesis that several factors within a single pathway can interact with one another and increase the risk of developing certain psychiatric disorders. This breakthrough in genetic research represents an extremely important advancement in the study of behavioral genetics, since attempts to identify genes can be notoriously difficult, and impeded by numerous confounding variables, as well as typically necessitating very large sample sizes.
Study suggests link between lucid dreaming and psychosis
A recent study conducted by the European Science Foundation suggested that brain activity during lucid dreaming is similar to that during psychosis, leading researchers to suggest that dream therapy may be useful in the treatment of certain psychiatric problems. The research is interesting because dream therapy has fallen out of favor among psychology researchers, although training a patient in lucid dreaming can sometimes help with nightmares. Lucid dreaming is an unusual dream-state in which you are aware when you are dreaming, making it a strange hybrid state straddling the boundaries between dreaming and waking consciousness. Electrical activity observed in the brain of those who are lucid dreaming is very similar to forms of psychotic illness such as schizophrenia. This discovery may help to shed light on how healthy dreaming deviates from pathological conditions such as psychiatric disorders.
More specifically, the data confirms a connection between lucid dreaming and psychological dissociation; a state in which the person loses concscious control over his or her men processes. More specifically, the dissociated person loses control of emotional reaction and logical thinking. This psychological condition has been observed in certain people even during waking consciousness, such as in the case of depersonalization, pseudoseizures and psychosis. The researchers theorized that paranoid delusions and certain hallucinations may occur when brain activity associated with dissociative dreaming is re-enacted in threatening situations and emerges in waking consciousness.
Credit : Dr. Rupin Shah (Consultant Urologist 33Years of Experience)
