[bvFTD]

Dear FamilyIsMyGoal:

Yes, there are instances they cannot recall, whether the episodes were euphoric or violent or aggressive, they may not be able to reconstruct them because there was a serious glitch, an out-of-body experience where they were not themselves.

You must understand that the frontal lobe of the brain has been compromised.

Initial stage creates chaos, heartbreak, maybe even bankruptcy from their incessant compulsion to spend. Once the disease infiltrates more parts of the brain, apathy sets in.

But then, so much damage has been done. 

[FamilyIsMyGoal]

Thanks bvftd. He has always had this to some extent but now it’s off the charts. Btw there has always been a family joke about how his uncle dropped him on his head when he was a baby. Now I’m seriously beginning to think about it.

The constant anger is really wearing on me. I keep trying to make sense of it. Intellectually I know that’s futile but it really hurts my feelings.  I’m still hoping he’s going to come out the other side and love me again. But it sure doesn’t feel that way.

[Thunder]

FTD,

How do you know the frontal lobe has been compromised?  I never read that about MLC.

In my H's case I'm sure his hormones were out of whack.  He even had hot flashes.

[Velika]

Dear FamilyIsMyGoal:

Yes, there are instances they cannot recall, whether the episodes were euphoric or violent or aggressive, they may not be able to reconstruct them because there was a serious glitch, an out-of-body experience where they were not themselves.

This can happen with bipolar as well.

[xyzcf]

FamilyIsMyGoal:

I have a question that some of you may be able to answer to some extent.

Is there something that happens in the brain, whether MLC or not, that allows someone to be extremely hostile, rude, etc, without them realizing it? 

This is very, very common for the individual who is having a Mid Life Crisis. I sometimes think of this as how I used to feel when I had PMS...I did not act at all the way I normally would.

Both my daughter and I have seen my husband act this way, in restaurants towards wait staff. He never ever did that before. This is part of his MLC.

As well, one of his work colleagues also saw him act this way towards the CEO of his company. He later told me he had never ever seen my husband act like that.

Yet, my husband is able to remain successful in a very high level executive position....a kind of DR. Jekle and Mr Hyde.

This is text book MLC and when their crisis is through, many have no recollection of some of the things they have said or how they acted. The "fog" we speak of is very very dense.

I again will refer to some of the anger that teenagers express...the volatility and abruptness, especially towards their parents and people of authority but not towards their peers. This developmental stage of life, like the terrible two's also passes and the anger and rage goes away, as it does in MLC. 

My husband recently told me that he feels like a teenager, he suggested 14 years old and I responded by saying I think he's even younger than that.

This is all classic MLC and is seen in many of the other poster's threads on Heros Spouse.

[Velika]

Two good ones:

Harder Evidence Builds That Viruses Play a Role in Alzheimer's
Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/harder-evidence-builds-that-viruses-play-a-role-in-alzheimers/
"The long-standing amyloid hypothesis posits that symptoms are triggered by the buildup of amyloid beta brain plaques, but trials of drugs that attempt to clear these plaques have so far flopped. Skeptical researchers have hunted for other explanations, and some have zeroed in on microbes. In March 2016 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 33 international scientists penned an editorial urging the research community to seriously consider the idea that pathogens could be involved."

Analysis of a Million-Plus Genomes Points to Blurring Lines Among Brain Disorders
Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/analysis-of-a-million-plus-genomes-points-to-blurring-lines-among-brain-disorders/
"According to the findings, published June 22 in Science, conditions such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder share a suite of overlapping genetic variants rather than having distinct genetic signatures."

[Anjae]

I come across that Alzheimer's news yesterday on The Guardian and Público (a Portuguese newspaper) - links below. Become so upset I wasn't even able to post about it.


Why did I become so upset? Because my paternal grandmother has Alzheimer's and she is getting worst and worst. I was like,"wait, a virus may be the cause (or a sympthom, they aren't sure whcih is it). Two strands of herpes virus? Really?"

A virus is, I think easier to deal with/find a solution than for the other views on Alzheimer's. But the, the article makes it clear "The Alzheimer’s community remains cautious about the findings. “Possible roles for microbes and viruses in Alzheimer's disease have been suggested and studied for decades, but previous research has not explained how they may be connected. This is the first study to provide evidence based on multiple, large data sets that lends support to this idea,” says Keith Fargo, director of scientific programs and outreach at the Alzheimer’s Association. But “more research is needed to discover exactly what roles, if any, they play. The new findings do not prove that the viruses cause the onset or contribute to the progression of Alzheimer's disease.”

Sadly it seems that more researche is necessary to see ifthe virus paly a role, and if so, which. Meanong, effective treatement for Alzheimer's will not come in tiem for my grandmother and many suffering from it right now. But they may be close. Or may be more willing to look intp other possibilities and come up with something that truly works and stops, or even reverses, this horrible disease.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/21/alzheimers-link-to-herpes-virus-in-brain-say-scientists

https://www.publico.pt/2018/06/21/ciencia/noticia/encontrada-uma-ligacao-entre-alzheimer-e-a-presenca-de-virus-no-cerebro-1835431


The Analysis of a Million-Plus Genomes Points to Blurring Lines Among Brain Disorders is interesting, but some things seem to be a little at odds with the Alzheimer's article.

For example this: "Is lower academic achievement in early life tied to the same gene changes as an increased risk for Alzheimer’s in older age? That is one of dozens of possible deductions to be drawn from the largest genomic study of brain conditions ever conducted, research that obscures what often have been considered clear diagnostic borders."

It may be some people with lower academic achievement in early life may have Alzheimer's , but that does not apply to many with the illness. And, as if the other article suggests, it may be a virus that most of us carry, and, for some reason gets activated at a point, lower academic achievement in early life may have nothing to do with it.

It is, or used to me, thought that an active mental life tillolder age may be a good way of preventing Alzheimer's. I alwways found that one a little strange. Several Alzheimer's patients kept a very active mental life until the disease showed its ugly head.


“One of the big messages is that psychiatric disorders turned out to be very connected on the genetic level,” - Not much of a surprise here. The tendency is for Psychiatric disorders to dissapear and be included in Neurology (I have talked about in the past).

Psychiatry, and the way Psychiatric disordersa are approached is outdated.  Psychiatric don't exist in a vacuum and are, somehow, connected to biology/nuerobiology/genes. We just don't know enough. Yet.

"But because the study was a “hypothesis-free approach,” as Anttila describes it, showing only statistical associations among genes, not proof of a common genetic basis, the findings are only a starting point for digging deeper “to better understand how these disorders arise,” he says. " I short,they still don't know how things really work, which means they still don't know how really to solve them.

“I was personally surprised by the lack of such correlations between neurological disorders and psychiatric ones,” he says, noting that he would have expected depression, for example, to show overlap with some neurological diseases." I will argue that depression (major clinical depression, post-partum or thyroid one is a different matter) is a neurologial disorder. To be fair, if it was up to me  the concept of psychatric disorder would disappear.

"Standing out from this crowd at the end of the shared-variant spectrum was schizophrenia, which overlapped with all of the psychiatric disorders except anxiety. PTSD, meanwhile, showed no significant association with any of them." No surprise there. PTSD, I would say is more connected to the nervous system (or parts of it).

Bottom line, they may know overlaps, etc., but remain clueless about exactly what causes the illneses, why, and how to cure them. Hope science finds cures/solutions soon.

[Velika]

A neuroscientist who lost her mind says it can happen to anyone
https://qz.com/1423416/a-neuroscientist-who-lost-her-mind-explains-the-brain

I'm quoting a few passages here, but urge you to read this important article. Not only does it describe the book, the author writes about her own brush with brain disfunction, responses she received, and touches on fugue states.

Lipska believes the world can get better at treating mental illness. But as she explains in her book The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, published in April 2018, part of the solution lies in ceasing to distinguish between mental and physical problems.

The neuroscientist wants the world to understand that mental illness is an organ malfunction, quite common and life threatening. In her book, she argues that we still judge brain malfunctions as if they are character deficits, reflections on a person’s value rather than the result of physical processes gone awry.

She can’t say precisely what caused her behavioral changes, whether it was cancer or medications or stress of illness or all three combined. But she can point to the region in the brain that was affected. “In my case, there was a lot of pressure on the frontal cortex and this regulates our behavior,” the neuroscientist says. When her frontal cortex was malfunctioning, she could no longer control herself—all the rules about where and when to do certain things, and how to communicate, became irrelevant to her. They were inaccessible, for all practical purposes nonexistent.

[Ready2Transform]

I'm glad to see fugue states brought up again, Velika. That's something that's only been touched on lightly here over the years, but I think there are some definite cases here that fit the bill. Looking forward to checking this out.

[kikki]

What an excellent article Velika.

Nine hundred years later, Western medicine is still struggling with this concept. Lipska is impatient with the slow progress, though she deeply believes that at some point, we will be able to see that any mental manifestation can be traced to a change in the brain. She concludes, “We are the brain. There’s nothing besides it. If something is wrong, it’s physical.”

As our brain/neurotransmitter/biochemistry threads will attest to over the years, from day one, I always knew that something had gone very wrong physically in my MLCers' head, that he would be behaving so very strangely.  To me it was a no-brainer (pardon the pun).
I too am impatient with this slow progress.