Imbalances, mental health disorders, psychiatric, emotional and behavioural disturbances are due to specific changes in the functioning of neurons and their synapses. Such brain alterations arise when some part of the neuronal circuits is overactive, inactive or unable to communicate effectively with each other. The dysfunction may be due to injury, changes in synaptic connections, or miswiring of the brain during development beginning in the womb. Depending on which regions are affected, disorders change the way we experience life, altering one or more aspects of human nature: emotion, cognition, memory, social interaction, freedom of choice, motor skills, ethical behaviour, etc.
From the third month of pregnancy until death, connections between brain structures responsible for emotions, thought, memory and action are created and eliminated, strengthened or weakened, and these connections are decisive for our sense of identity.
The human mind originates in the brain through genetic, biochemical, environmental or epigenetic factors. The brain alone is nothing, it is part of the body, it commands the body and is influenced, commanded by it. So when we try to talk about health or disease it is of little use if we do not understand it as a whole of inseparable units.
The atmosphere is both outside and inside us. Inside in the form of the flood of stimuli and experiences of the early years, then the influence of peers in adolescence and finally the little influence exerted by the outside but which will activate or deactivate the emotional contents created, introjected in early childhood. The emotional infant, which we were and are, will drive our desires and decisions from deep within; nor will we ever leave behind many traits of the adolescent we experienced. Although, all of this is usually acting out of consciousness.
The first environmentThe following factors are important: pregnancy, factors such as nutritional deficits, infections, exposure to toxins or stress and, subsequently, insufficient quality parental presence to maintain a climate of calm that will interact with genes and increase the risk of damaging the genes. dopaminergic pathways of the foetus and the first months.
The lack or lack of sensory stimulation and the quality of social relationships during the first years of life modulates the structure of the brain. Hormones and other substances produced in the brain from within are essential for healthy brain growth, and deficiencies have deleterious and long-lasting consequences on cognition and behaviour.
From all this, which is of course highly simplified, will depend the development of the circuits that modulate our thinking and will, such as those of the prefrontal cortex: circuits of impulse inhibition and moral character, empathy, self-criticism, the ability to foresee and consider consequences. A structure that with its enormous development differentiates us from all other creatures with brains, we can say that it is the most human. The other components of our brain are common with the rest of the animals, we are slightly different apes. Everything has been vitiated. Pets have feelings; plants and insects also react and communicate,
Mental health also depends on the limbic system, the set of structures where emotions and the management of our biological life are born. Important regions for thought, memory, instincts and the physiology of our body and its functions.
These regions, modules, structures and mental functions keep us normal or altered and are outside of consciousness.
Disturbances of the mind arise when certain parts of the neural circuitry - certain neurons and the circuits in which they are located - are overactive, inactive or unable to communicate effectively. What this means is that the brain works as a functional unit, we use the whole brain, not, as they say, ten percent.
We need the family environment to complete something of such complexity, and it is the challenge we have been trying to meet for more than a century: the mind. The main issue is the years that the human brain needs, in the family environment, to complete the 70% of its brain development, which requires certain conditions, sensory stimuli, emotional and affective dedication, adequate nutrition, emotional stability; a sum that, it is almost a miracle that it receives what that brain needs at any given moment. Consequently, what can be expected is that an immense multitude of people have not finished their development and have a brain in whose origin are the alterations of mental health and other failures of their emotional life: psychopathies, neurotic disorders, narcissistic personalities, people without empathy, obsessive disorders, violence and lack of control, addictions, fanaticism, the thousands of people who from the networks spout bile, those who want to destroy what we have been and what we are, arsonists, swindlers, cynics and the great etcetera that results in altered societies and lends itself to confrontation, now and in the past.
Not only the brain, the bacteria in our gut modulate considerably the functioning of our brain, but also from the stomach and pancreas.
The bone system - as a result of exercise - as an endocrine organ, releases a hormone called osteocalcin which acts on many organs of the body and also reaches the brain, where it is necessary for spatial memory and learning, intervening in the production of serotonin, dopamine, GABA and other neurotransmitters, which are at the bottom of our emotional states, our character, our way of feeling and living. That's how important it is to exercise daily!
Lack of exercise also affected age-related memory loss. Indeed, it stimulates the production of PKA, CREB and RbAp48, i.e. the proteins necessary for memory formation. The brain also needs muscles for irisin, because they induce the protection, "health" and survival of neurons.
I insist that, to maintain mental health, sport is essential, because in addition to endorphins, it releases anandamide, growth factors for the newly "born" neurons and osteocalcin, all of which produce a remodelling of the brain architecture. And gyms are considered a luxury item, not a daily drug.
And, what we can define as unfinished developments, the basis of the lack of mental health, would need something that the vast majority rejects and wants to ignore: psychological therapy, dynamic therapy to get out of the impasses in which so many people find themselves in their emotional life; and, above all, that can finish those aspects of the personality that due to their complexity were not achieved. Therapy changes the brain. This has been shown, among others, by Eric Kandel, after Cajal, two Nobel prize winners. Therefore, many people could improve if they were not afflicted by this animal fear of the unknown, of dependence on experienced professionals.
There seems to be little room for supposing that the mind and its mental health disturbances are fundamentally due to socio-economic relations. Whether or not we are focusing on what is essential for health: education and the family. And, let us be left alone as subjects of propaganda and manipulation, as products of a political market dominated by sectarian ferocity.
*The texts reflect the views of the author and are independent of the opinions of PROA.