Gifted and Talented: Bucky Fuller

Excerpted from the current popular neuroscience book I'm reading, A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain, by the great John J. Ratey, M. D.

"The development of personality itself is firmly rooted in the sensory apparatus. Even people with extraordinary perceptual abilities often exist in a love/hate relationship with their gifts, because it can be alienating to "see" the world differently than most people. Yet that different view is the defining characteristic of any great artist - indeed, the characteristic that makes each of us unique. The great American architect Buckminster Fuller, perhaps best known for his creation of the geodesic dome, often felt tremendously overloaded by visual stimulation. He would routinely wear glasses that allowed only part of the visual spectrum to enter his eyes, and when he put them on he found it easier to think. When out on a building site or out for a stroll in the city, he would wear earplugs because the noise left him unable to deal with the world.

Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (1895-1983) was an American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.
Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Shadow Syndromes

Shadow Syndromes by John J. Ratey M.D. and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D.

Of Complexity and Tipping Points: Uncertainty and the “Low Seratonin” Model

Continuing on with another entry in my OCD-themed blogging, with reports from Shadow Syndromes, by John Ratey M.D. and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D., I will now share some of their key points about the complex relationship between the brain and medication (also known as drugs).

As the authors put it, “The first point to absorb as we set about attempting to influence the course of our own biology is that the brain is infinitely complex. It is a widely accepted view among neuroscientists that the brain is the most complex system in the known universe. A quart-sized mass of tissue, the brain contains roughly 100 billion neurons, each and every one of those 100 billion neurons possessing an average of 10,000 links to other neurons. For all practical purposes, the brain is infinite.” Cue the awe-inspiring Carl Sagan voiceover.

Sadly, as usual, it seems there is no sure one-stop cure using a pharmacological magic bullet. It turns out, the oft-cited, simple-to-explain explanation of a “low” serotonin/(neourotransmitter of your choice) level is, as I felt all along in my OCD-rattled brain, actually extraordinarily complex, more complex than I, like you, was told. It seems there are unlucky 13 or more different kinds of serotonin receptors found in animals, while it is still unknown how many more serotonin receptors we humans possess. Whatever the number, each and every one of these receptors exists within each synapse and when a “serotonin-raising” medication hits the synapse, each different serotonin receptor is affected in a different way. Some receptors alter electrical transmission in response to the drug, other receptors alter chemical transmission, and so on.

Continuing with this intellectual buzz-kill of the simple solution, “But the real story of serotonin levels isn’t told by even the individual synapses being affected, because each and every synapse is always affected in turn by the neurons lying ‘downstream.’ ‘Downstream’ neurons are neurons lying past the neuron being treated by the SSRI – the neurons being ‘fed into’ by the neuron responding to the drug. The downstream neuron may feedback into the upstream neuron and actually decrease serotonin release – or the downstream neuron’s feedback may increase serotonin release further – we simply do not know, at least yet (written in 1997).”

But wait -- that’s not all -- you also get this further ungainly wrinkle, “Then you have to take the cascade of enzymes that make up the serotonin molecule into account: these enzymes may be influenced by the feedback loop as well, and the enzymes are in turn affected by ever smaller hormones like peptides and the chemistry that guides them, and we have yet to even mention genes and cell functioning.”

In short, the workings of the serotonin system are unknown. The scientists at Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Prozac, simply do not know what Prozac does to the brain downstream. They know what it does in the synapse; they do not know what the cascade of feedback loops and genetic mechanisms this synaptic change sets off.

A cascade effect is set off.  Any treatments of any kind will produce effects unique to each individual. No doctor, no psychiatrist can predict what affect this pill, or this “talking cure,” will have upon this person’s biology. The clinician can only rely on statistical averages: how many patients with this cluster of issues typically respond to a particular treatment? After that it is simply a matter of trying the treatment and seeing what happens. (Perhaps to soften this unsettling new from OCD’s two fellow travelers, Mr. Uncertainty and Mr. Risk, the authors parenthetically add: In fact, the majority of patients who choose to take up medication do end up experiencing very real and significant improvement. At least half, and probability more, of all patients who consult a psychiatrist will find the help they need). Of course that means that nearly half don’t, adds Mr. Glass Half-Empty, glumly.

A discussion of cascades, non-linear phenomena, complexity, the popular Chaos metaphor of “the butterfly effect,” and self-organizing emergence, and ensues. This is enlivened with illustrations from Malcolm Gladwell’s popular Tipping Point book.

So, the disturbing news is that the science behind the drugs is so complex, that like the weather, it is nigh-impossible to get precise, predictable forecasts about will happen when you take any neurotransmitter-enhancing medication. Minuscule changes at one location can percolate through the system so as to bring about major effects somewhere else.

The hopeful news the authors ask us to take away is that it is possible to have a positive “tipping point” as well as a negative one. It’s not a one-way street like entropy. You might be able to “tip” from the serious classic version of a disorder to a shadow syndrome, which while not perfect, will certainly bring about a welcome higher quality of life. As Mr. Gladwell put it, “it is the nature of nonlinear phenomena that sometimes the most modest of changes can bring about enormous effects.”

The authors’ musings on complexity conclude with, “Thus the notion that things might naturally come together – might naturally, inevitably and suddenly cohere; this is something new under the sun. It is such a novel concept that some complexologists believe a fifth fundamental force (in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces that govern the atom) will be discovered to exist in nature. We are looking to tip up; we are hoping to reach that magic moment when life and love ‘self-organize’ into something splendid. That is the hope.”

Ah yes, uncertainty, risk, exposure, and hope – “Welcome back my OCD friends, to the show that never ends.”

The “Hidden” OCD/Anxiety Epidemic

While shopping the clearance section at Half-Price Books as I often do (it’s my version of the hunting and fishing pastimes), I ran across a fantastic book, Shadow Syndromes, by John Ratey M.D. and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. I almost always buy my medical and business books in the clearance section because the prices are a low, low, low $1-$3, and I figure even if I only get one idea from a book, it was well worth the money and time spent.

This book was an awesome find. It provides many valuable insights into the neuropsychiatry of “mild” or forme fruste (which the authors have renamed “shadow syndromes”) manifestations of psychological disorders, which as it often turns out, actually aren’t all that mild. Since the OCD/anxiety disorders are “spectrum disorders,” I had already come up with my own jazzy description of the forme fruste.

In jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton’s landmark interview with Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress recordings, he referred to the influence of Cuban habanera rhythms in some of his tunes as “the Spanish tinge.” He remarked, “In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.” Since anxiety and OCD are often deemed “spectrum disorders,” instead of saying “I have a mental illness,” I opt to say more precisely, “I have an anxiety disorder with an ‘OCD tinge.’”

The authors, in their chapter titled “The Hidden Epidemic,” detail how startlingly common the “attention ‘surplus’ disorders” of anxiety/OCD/addiction actually are.

The authors estimate 70% of the population may suffer at least one classic anxiety symptom (you need several symptoms to meet the official criteria for a medical diagnosis). What psychiatrists see most are the disorders that involve fear. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Attacks, and OCD involve fear and dread, out of proportion with reality. There can be no doubt, we live in the Age of Anxiety.

Classic OCD was once thought to be rare, affecting only an estimated 0.2% of the population. This figure has been revised dramatically upwards to 3.65% -- one person in forty, or five million Americans. Brain Lock author Jeffrey M. Schwartz claims OCD “is more common than asthma or diabetes” (or so it may have been in the nineties, before the diabetes numbers skyrocketed to new heights).When the many variants of severe OCD as well as its shadow forms are included in the prevalence estimates, they rise so high the spectrum has achieved the dubious distinction of a “hidden epidemic.” Hidden, because those afflicted are often afraid to afraid to admit their troubling reactions to others, for fear of being labeled “crazy.” If misery loves company, and you have OCD/anxiety, you are not alone -- not by a long shot.

A survey by the OCD Foundation found that those afflicted have had to wait an average of 17 years from symptom onset to a receipt of an effective treatment. In my case, it took over twice as long as this average -- 36 years.