2004-05-15
pix credit © 1999 | David Oaks/MindFreedom.org --v
messing with the chemistry of the brain | The April Issue of Scientific American had an article on glial cells in the brain, [The Other Half of the Brain; April 2004; by R. Douglas Fields] and postulated the as yet little explored influence upon thinking that glial cells may have |
The author clarified how these previously ignored cells, which make up at least half of the brain's cellular structure, are now seen to be a parallel [and co-existing] system to the neural network run on electrical synapses that neuroscientists have been studying intensively for these past 50 years |
This is all the more interesting for me, given that I work with individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and other perceptual discontuities in typical thinking processes | You know, those things more commonly referred to as mental illnesses |
Those points said, I began wondering what research, if any, has been done to determine the effects, especially the unwanted ones, that neuroleptic drugs, used ~at times, indiscriminately~ to treat the unwanted symptoms of major perceptual disorders/disabilities |
A Google Search was somewhat encouraging, producing a range of research findings, one as far back as 1998 | An article [by Normand Carrey and Stan Kutcher] provided some convoluted backhanded language suggesting that giving potent neuroleptics to children might have an adverse effect on healthy manufacture of gilal cells | Other items were less specific, but provided a snapshot of the researchers taking up the challenge in this field |
And the challenge is great | For not only shall people with "major mental illnesses" be impacted by such research, but so too are folks with Alzheimer's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington's Chorea... virtually any disorder affecting neural paths and operations |
I'll remain particularly interested in following this line of observation and experimentation | ¶ 10:39
