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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

(photo Source: Pexels) many people may have some psychological problems more or less, and mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder are becoming more and more common. The manifestations of these mental diseases are different, even for the same disease, the symptoms of different patients are not the same. Because scientists have not yet fully studied our brains and how they work, it is even more difficult to treat these mental diseases in the face of such complex conditions.

(by Mei Lin / tr. by Robert Taylor)

If we want to find a way to treat mental diseases such as depression and anxiety disorders, we must first understand the pathogenic mechanism of these mental diseases and prescribe the right medicine. There may be people around you who suffer from depression and phobia. as we said earlier, the symptoms of each mental illness are different. Some are very quiet, some are crazy, some are even violent, and some don't fight, but they may repeat the same behavior all the time.

As a result, you might think that all kinds of mental diseases have different pathogenic mechanisms. To put it simply, the reflex areas of the brain that may have problems vary according to the manifestation of the disease. Is this really the case?

Different brain regions of the human brain correspond to certain functions of the human body, such as the visual processing area of the hypothalamus and the part of the hippocampus responsible for memory.

On the contrary, different mental diseases may have the same cause, which is completely different from our usual understanding of mental illness. In other words, usually silent, depressed patients with the same attack of blushing heartbeat, out of control phobia patients, may be caused by the same factor. Brain scientists at Fudan University have found that many completely different diseases, such as depression, phobias and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, may have the same pathogenic mechanism-lack of "pruning" of brain nerves.

The nerve pruning mechanism in the brain? Human brain development continues at an extremely rapid rate from birth to puberty, resulting in human brain capacity reaching 90% of that of adults at the age of 6. The explosive development of the human brain is mainly due to the increase of neurons, synapses and other neural structures, resulting in a result that the generated neural structures exceed the needs of the human body. Therefore, from around puberty, the brain begins to "prune" neurons, synapses and other neural structures, just as gardeners cut off unnecessary plant branches, and some unnecessary neural structures are also trimmed off.

In the process of "pruning", constantly used neurons and synapses are preserved, while unused neurons and synapses are considered unnecessary and cut off. This "pruning" is affected by the growth environment in childhood, which determines which neurons and synapses are used all the time and which are unnecessary.

Every neuron has axons and dendrites. One neuron connects with the dendrites of another neuron through axons, and the structure of this connection is called synapse. Nerve impulses spread between neurons through synapses, and neurons form neural networks through synapses. (photo Source: Pixabay) lack of pruning causes brain disease by analyzing brain scans of nearly 2000 14-year-olds, scientists have found possible indications of related brain diseases. In addition to brain imaging studies, scientists also surveyed the teenagers and their parents with questionnaires to assess their mental health (such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders and fear), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism symptoms.

Combined with the analysis of brain scans, the scientists pointed out that the people with the highest scores had more severe symptoms and a higher density of prefrontal cortex tissue, suggesting that their brain nerves were not pruned or delayed. The same conclusion has been reached not only among teenagers, but also among scientists in their 20s. Therefore, it can be said that the lack of cerebral nerve pruning is also related to the brain function of adults.

However, some scientists have pointed out that existing studies cannot quantify how much brain nerve pruning is lacking in people with mental illness compared with normal people, and it is not clear whether these people who lack brain nerve pruning can naturally return to normal in the future. In addition, the human brain nervous system is extremely complex, the lack of brain nerve pruning is only a factor in brain health, not the only factor.

References:

Https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02317-4

How people learn II: learners, context and Culture. Cora Baghli Maret et al. East China normal University Press, October 2021

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