Word: hypothalamus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Despite years of experience and large numbers of patients (an estimated 100,000 people undergo treatment in the U.S. each year), no one is exactly sure how ECT works. According to one theory, the seizure affects the hypothalamus, a portion of the brain regulating production of the body's mood-controlling substances. What is known is that patients often do not recall either the treatment or any events immediately before it. But critics of ECT, even as it is practiced today, say that it can also cause permanent brain damage, including a loss of memory of events...
...discourages eating. PPA, a drug related to the amphetamines, has enjoyed a long history as a nasal decongestant in cold remedies. In such popular diet pills as Dexatrim, Prolamine, Spantrol and Appedrine (which also contain caffeine), manufacturers say that it depresses the brain's "appetite center" in the hypothalamus...
...other half of the prize will be shared by two researchers who employed the new technique to solve a major puzzle in endocrinology. Scientists had learned by the 1960s that the body's master gland, the pituitary, was itself apparently controlled by the hypothalamus, a tiny neighboring area in the base of the brain. But how? Leading separate and often hotly competing teams, Polish-born Andrew Schally, 50, at Tulane University and the VA hospital in New Orleans, and French-born Roger Guillemin, 53, then at Baylor University and now at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., isolated...
...spinal cord like the crown of a tree out of its trunk, the brain has several major components (see diagram page 52). The limbic system, an area that surrounds the head of the brain stem and includes such structures as the amygdala, part of the thalamus, hypothalamus and hippocampus, regulates the emotions. The pituitary, which hangs down from the brain stem like an olive from the tree, produces the hormones that influence growth and development. The cerebellum, a fist-sized structure at the rear of the brain that controls movements and coordination, enables man to touch his nose with...
Psychiatrists have long suspected that there is a physiological basis for severe depression. They know that thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), a substance released by the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, triggers the production of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH); now, they hypothesize that it may have another function as well. Drs. Arthur Prange Jr. and Ian Wilson of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the North Carolina department of mental health have found that TRH, which can be synthesized in the laboratory, seems to function as an antidepressant. They have used it experimentally to provide apparently...