[Mermaid]

I feel that there must be some hereditary component to this. I wish we knew more! Makes me worry for our son.💔

You feel it. You look and fit what you see to something which gives you an explanation. I understand the need for an explanation, when it seems inexplicable. But if you want to be scientific, follow logical scientific procedures. See http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html

There are many here whose forebears did not behave in this way, including my H. My H was, and is still, suffering from depression and the feeling of being overwhelmed by life events that I will not go into here.

In psychology/ neurology and even medicine, you cannot separate a behaviour from a person, their perceptions and their life course.

If their is one factor that most MLCers faced, it is stress. Sometimes not extreme stress. So look at the neurobiology of stress. But stress has its interpretative components. What is stressful for one is stimulating for another. Why can some people take incredible amounts of stress and still seem to thrive? Why do others flake out at the thought of daily behaviours? There may be a neurological resistence, but as the brain is plastic, this can be trained.

On the other hand, those who have had deeply traumatic events early in their lives may find it difficult to overcome the fear of catasthrophy and insecurity later on.

The point is this; look at neurobiology, but understand its context. And be careful of clutching at straws.

[Velika]

Yes I am following steps 1 to 3 in this informal setting: making observations, asking questions, forming hypothesis. Like many who have experienced sudden or ongoing trauma I am trying to make sense.

[Not Applicable]

However, after 6 years on this forum, and after extensive reading, I really do doubt that what we call MLC is one thing at all. In fact, there's no evidence for it. 10% of American men do have a something they crisis, but it's likely to be a cultural construction as this is not so prevalent outside the US, and absent in some cultures.

I just joined the forum because I wanted to participate in this discussion. I feel strongly that this is a medical issue and i will explain more why in another post but as I am reading through I had to respond to this. My husband is from a different culture. He spent 3.5 years in the US but we married in his culture and after that time in the US we returned to his culture and we live in his hometown now. This is when his midlife crisis started. And while there are certain cultural variables that have made it very different in its manifestation, his behavior is EXACTLY like what your typical American man going through a midlife crisis does. He's following the script. This is NOT due to cultural effects, because he is not familiar with the typical MLC concept in the US.

[Not Applicable]

Interesting discussion!

MBIB I agree with you. This is an online forum, and this thread is about biochemistry and brain research. If there are peer reviewed articles on this as pertains to MLC, midlife depression, or other symptoms often described by LBS I would love to read them and hope someone could post.

No one here is posting about how to perform amateur exploratory brain surgery on MLCer using simple tools at home. We are just sharing articles of interest, maybe that list some symptoms that sound similar to MLC, maybe just wondering. These are conversations academics, professionals, friends have informally all the time about all sorts of topics. We are just having a discussion, right, but we don't live close to one another and can't meet at a cafe to discuss/joke/ask questions so we do it here. I'm not sure it matters if these discussions end up going down the wrong road or taking a tangent. MLC is horrible but it is also pretty fascinating.

I agree that MLC is an umbrella term. However, I am only one year in and I can see that it is possible to predict behavior and even language patterns, at least among certain subsets of MLCers. Since the onset is apparently so sudden in these cases, it makes sense to want to figure out which region of the brain might be affected.

I've actually searched PubMed, which is the database of medical research, and I found NOTHING has been done (or at least published) regarding MLC from a neurological/biochemical/hormonal perspective. It's NOT good science to say MLC is a myth, that it doesn't exist, or that it has no scientific foundation, because until the research is done to prove or disprove it, anyone saying it doesn't exist is as much unfounded in their comments as us speculating on what parts of the brain are involved. And even if research is done and they don't find something right away, it doesn't mean there isn't a basis to it, it just may be they haven't found it yet.

For other mental illnesses, e.g. schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, scientists may not yet fully understand the chemical/genetic/etc. basis for them but the do know there is a basis. And those illnesses manifest themselves outwardly in clear behavioral and speech patterns. I think anyone who reads "MLC for Dummies" and has a husband in MLC can say that it fits them to a T. It's supposed to be like a joke yes, but there is a deep truth in it. They follow a script. That's what everyone says. And it is true. And the fact that there is really nothing we can do  to shift their behavior. Logic doesn't work where it might have previously. Emotional pressure doesn't work where it might have previously. I don't know enough about the brain to speculate about the details here, but obviously parts of their brain that were receptive before are no longer receptive.

[Not Applicable]

I feel that there must be some hereditary component to this. I wish we knew more! Makes me worry for our son.💔

You feel it. You look and fit what you see to something which gives you an explanation. I understand the need for an explanation, when it seems inexplicable. But if you want to be scientific, follow logical scientific procedures. See http://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html

But you have done the same in denying there is MLC and saying it is a cultural construct. As I pointed out above, no one has done scientific research to prove it one way or another. I don't think any of us here CAN actually perform the scientific research ourselves but these are all hypotheses that are possible.

[Not Applicable]

I think I am going to take a new approach and contact the authors of these articles. Like many others on this thread in particular, I believe there is a neurological/biophysical reason for what we are observing, and that the specific family issues that come up are secondary to this loss of brain regulation — or in fact simply a repeat of previous episodes of same illness in other family members.

Watching MLC unfold is both horrifying and I have to admit fascinating. It makes you really wonder how the brain works and what is going on. Perhaps others on this thread have done so already, but I think it would be interesting to approach researchers and ask them how their work on the brain might apply to sudden changes in midlife. Since MLC seems quite similar to bipolar, BPD, and major depression these are likely good areas of research to focus on.

For what it's worth. I hate to feel I am helplessly standing by in all this. I appreciate all the research others here have done on this complex topic.

Velika, I have had similar thoughts as you. I want to contact researchers who work in similar fields and suggest that someone look into this. Nothing probably can be achieved to solve our problems in time but no one should have to suffer as we and our spouses do if there is something that can be done or at least understood.

What really gets me is that all our spouses started out with unique personalities, unique to them, and then suddenly they lose their original personality and adopt a new one, and that new one looks like the personality of every other person going through what we call MLC. Why is it we can all relate to eachother except due to these similarities? It's like our husbands lose themselves and put on a costume, and everyone has the same costume. This can't simply be coincidental. I'm not going to speculate why but the brain has to be reshaped in a certain way to work like this.

[Ready2Transform]

Hope you stick around, Changing4Ever. We may be outliers among outliers in the standing community, but even the few of us who feel this way can make a difference if we band together.

[Velika]

R2T I am glad you commented on this as I hadn't seen C4E posts, which got me motivated again to look into this. (C4E I didn't see them before, for some reason I don't get alerts so don't always see updates/responses to threads I try to follow.)

C4E what you wrote really resonated with me, especially how all these MLC spouses had nuanced personalities until this took over. I am not sure if you saw what I posted on ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but if you read what happens when this part of the brain is impaired you have a very similar description to what we are calling MLC.

For what it is worth, every single medical professional I have talked to has told me this is neurological/psychiatric. I have written this elsewhere on the forum for I believe that if it weren't for the affair then this would be a recognized medical condition.

I was thinking maybe I will look up neurology conferences and try to notice who is presenting on topics like depression that many believe is related.

[Thunder]

Changing,

I agree with everything you said.
In order for this to get any traction there needs to be studies done, and how on earth do you get subjects for this study when none of the MLCer's admit they have a problem?  Who do you study?  Their not going to volunteer.

Ok, you could interview the LBS's but there are 2 problems with that.

1, Every MLCer is unique, similar but still different.

2. We have no idea what goes through their head, so it's all a guessing game as far as I'm concerned.

I guess I don't see how any kind of real studies can be done.      How would they even start?

[Not Applicable]

Well, it wouldn't be a study they could do quickly. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, it would be helpful to have a baseline of the sufferer's condition before the MLC started, as well as after. So you would need to recruit a bunch of married couples at an earlier age, say 30, do tests on them periodically, interview them periodically, then if either party started to show the behavioral symptoms of midlife crisis, you would look for physical manifestations. Follow through until those manifestations pass, see if there is any change in anything. Compare them to people whose behavior never changes. We are talking here about a multi-year if not multi-decade study. And then there would be the issue of what physical aspects would you look at?

The thing is whoever took this on as a research topic would be starting from nothing. Another approach would be to lobby the psychiatric community to get MLC in to the next DSM. No one is going to want to fund research on something that no one even recognizes as an illness to begin with. Once it was recognized, then there would be a reason to research it to look for a cure.