Word: stimuli
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...start out as habits but slide into addictions. Sometimes there might be a behavior-specific root of the problem. Volkow's research group, for example, has shown that pathologically obese people who are compulsive eaters exhibit hyperactivity in the areas of the brain that process food stimuli--including the mouth, lips and tongue. For them, activating these regions is like opening the floodgates to the pleasure center. Almost anything deeply enjoyable can turn into an addiction, though...
...babies need to be receptive to any language and the facial cues that differentiate them. With time, they learn to focus on the sounds, muscle movements and facial rhythms of only the languages to which they are exposed. It's all part of the way babies learn, by processing stimuli from a range of senses; even language, it seems, depends on visual triggers. So go ahead and coo at the next infant you encounter. Just be expressive about...
What seems clear, however, is that the brain of a migraineur (as sufferers are called) is primed to overreact to all sorts of stimuli that most people can easily tolerate. "The brain receives input from a wide variety of triggers--stress, hormones, falling barometric pressure, food, drink, sleep disturbances," says Dr.David Buchholz, a neurologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. "Each of us has hisown stack of triggers and his own personal threshold at which the migraine mechanism activates. The higher the trigger level climbs above the threshold, the more fully activated the migraine system...
...pair knew from their previous research that, presented with certain stimuli, depressed bipolar patients don't use the prefrontal (or higher thinking) part of their brain as much as healthy subjects do, instead recruiting other (more hardwired) parts to compensate. And they found a similar pattern of activation in patients at the manic end of the spectrum. This was tantalizing because it suggested the disparities were related not to mood but to bipolar itself. Needing more evidence, they began studying bipolar patients in the euthymic state - when their moods have stabilized and they appear to be well. The results continued...
...Medical technology has yet to invent a machine that can look into another's mind to see what he's feeling, or thinking. No doubt the body, with its physical brain, responds physically to noxious stimuli. But the non-physical mind is yet the only realm in which the bad experience of suffering exists. Mind and brain are mysteriously related. Lobotomized or drug-loaded patients can still answer questions. Stick one with a big needle and ask: does it hurt? Yes, it does, doctor. You can get him to report a VAS number. They might even withdraw from the needle...