Male’s Health in the Objective of Stressology – Beyond the Usual

Humanistic psychology or the “third force” in psychology as a scientific trend emerged in the fifties of the twentieth century opposing itself to the two already existing trends – behaviorism (behavior psychology) and psychoanalysis. It treats a person as an open self-developing system that has phylo- and ontogenetic history. In each of us there lives a great story – the history of the life of mankind, about which C. Jung figuratively has written that behind each of us, as behind a running wave, the pressure of the ocean of world history is felt. Small history is an individual real life story of a specific individual. In key moments of each history there occur quantum leaps determining subsequent development of a person. Thus, in the great history these are development and improvement of the higher nervous activity (HNA), appearance and development of the second signal system, consciousness, mental adaptation; in the small history these are age crises, overcoming mental traumas. These crucial points (critical periods) are like “waking-up experience”, refreshing perception and behavior after which a person “acquires new space, new skin, new start and new life; even at the age over 75” (I. Yalom, publ. Eksmo, Moscow, 2014, p. 511).

Now scientists are engaged in “a riddle of neuroevolution” with its basic question: “How in the ways of biological evolution have emerged mind and human brain?” The problem of neuroevolution connects biology to psychology. And today, scientists realized that the main efforts of the evolution of the animal world have been spent just to create the human brain. They found the genes responsible for the key functions of the brain – learning and memory formation. It is in the course of natural selection, which affects functions and structures increasing survival or reproduction, that population changes in the gene frequencies associated with these functional systems occur.To understand the psyche as a function of certain dynamic organization of the brain structures, it is necessary to understand how these structures and their organization emerged in the course of biological evolution. It is part of the problem of morphological evolution. By the molecular cloning techniques it became possible to calculate that out of approximately 80–100 thousand genes composing the genome of the rat about 50–60 thousand are expressed in the brain, the expression of more than half of them being brain-specific. In the usual state of the brain these genes are “silent” but as soon as there is something that requires memorizing, they are activated and then, having done their work become “silent” again. But unlike other somatic organs, many of these genes are activated in the brain again in the situations of novelty and learning.

The two phases of the evolutionary cycle – maturation and adaptive modifications of functional systems providing survival, are closely related at the level of gene expression regulation mechanisms. In fact, the processes of morphogenesis (biology) and development never cease in the brain, but only pass under the control of cognitive and volitional processes (psychology). This similarity makes you think about the intense evolutionary interactions and transitions between these two domains. There is the reason to believe that it is the study of these interactions that can answer one of the most complex and challenging issues of modern science – how in the course of phylogenesis the brain became the organ that determines not only behavior, activity, health, illness, but also the evolution of genome.

Just a few decades ago, scientists believed that the brain is unchanged and “programmed” and that most forms of its damage are incurable. The book by Norman Doidge “Brain Plasticity. Startling facts about how thoughts can change the structure and function of the brain” (translation, publ. Eksmo, Moscow; monograph, 2011, p. 539) – is a remarkable and hopeful description of infinite capacity of the human brain to adapt. Dr. Doidge, a prominent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by the transformations occurred with his patients.

Discovery of the fact that thoughts are able – even in elderly age – to change the brain structure and functions, is the greatest achievement in neurology for the past four centuries.

Norman Doidge suggests a revolutionary view on the human brain. He talks about brilliant scientists, promoting yet a new science of neuroplasticity, and about astonishing successes of people whose lives they have changed. He gives examples of stroke patients recovering their facilities; the case of a woman born with a half of the brain, which reprogrammed itself to perform the functions of the missing half; stories of overcoming learning disabilities and emotional disorders, increasing the level of intelligence and restoration of the aging brain. His first reports contradicted the generally accepted view about the brain and its functioning, so he began studying the new science – neuroplasticity. He wrote: “The idea that the brain is capable of changing its own structure and functioning thanks to the person’s thoughts and actions – is the most important innovation in our ideas about the human brain since its anatomy and work of its substantive structural unit – neuron was first outlined in general terms. This is a revolution!

Revolution associated with the brain neuroplasticity, among other things, cannot but exert influence on our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships with people, education, addictions, culture, technology and psychotherapy are changing our brain…”. But neuroplasticity is capable of forming both flexible and rigid behavior – the phenomenon of “plastic paradox”. Plastic change once occurred in the brain structures as a result of its fixation may interfere with other changes. Only the understanding of both positive and negative impact of plasticity on our brain allows us to fully realize the limits of human capabilities.

His discovery was based on the work of, first of all, Alexander Luria (1902–1977) – famous Russian psychologist, one of the few major theoretical psychologist and experts, well-known in the West. Luria proved the plastic possibilities of “higher mental functions” as far back as in the 40-ies of XX century. During World War II, he worked with a group of colleagues in rehabilitation of wounded with severe brain injuries (contusions and brain injuries). Then the psychologists achieved striking results: completely hopeless and paralyzed people began to move normally, walk and talk. He obtained practical results that were quite expected! They corresponded to the known in the Soviet Union since the 30-ies theoretical developments proving plasticity of brain and psychological functions (the work of physiologists N. A. Bernstein, P. K. Anokhin, brilliant psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, fundamental works on the psychology of S. L. Rubinstein, A. N. Leontiev and others) and only confirmed the psychological concepts in practice. A. R. Luria became the founder of quite a new direction in the world psychology – neuropsychology[2].

Paul Bach-y-Rita was an American neuroscientist in the middle of the last century, whose most notable work was in the field of neuroplasticity. Bach-y-Rita was one of the first to seriously study the idea of neuroplasticity (although it was first proposed in the late 19th century), and to introduce sensory substitution as a tool to treat patients suffering from neurological disorders.

Paul Bach-y-Rita was one of the first who has discovered that our sensory systems have a plastic nature, and that in case of damage of any of them, the other from time to time can take over its functions. Paul Bach-y-Rita called this process “sensory substitution” and developed methods for bringing it into operation, as well as devices that give us “extrasensory perception”. Having discovered the possibility of the nervous system adaptation to the vision via chamber of eye, not the retina, Bach-y-Rita gave blind people the greatest hope for the emergence of retinal implants that can be introduced into the eye surgically. This is the ability to adapt and suggests that the brain is plastic, i.e. is able to reorganize its sensory-perceptual system. In 1977 by means of a new technique it was proven that (contrary to the Brock’s statement that a person speaks with the help of the left hemisphere) 95 % of healthy right-handed persons processed the language information in the left hemisphere, while the remaining 5 % – in the right one. 70 % of lefties process this information in the left hemisphere, but 15 % do so with the help of the right hemisphere, and another 15 % use for this both hemispheres (S. P. Springer and G. Deutsch, 1999).

Barbara and Joshua Cohen in 1980 opened the Arrowsmith school in Toronto. Then, very few have taken the idea of neuroplasticity and believed that the brain can be trained as muscles, giving it loads, so the work of Barbara rarely found understanding. She developed various training exercises for different patients. There are exercises for people with disorders of the frontal lobes of the brain. These people differ from others in impulsion, or have difficulty with planning, developing strategies, determining priorities, setting goals and their achievements. They are often considered disorganized, frivolous and incapable of learning from their mistakes; whereas Barbara believes that many of the “flighty” or “unsociable” people have problems with the weakening of certain brain functions. Exercises for the brain transform people’s lives.

Among experts in neuroplasticity with a serious track record in the world of the natural sciences, Mertsenih, to whom belong the boldest statements in this area, is well-known. He believes that in treatment of serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, brain exercises can be as effective as drugs; that the brain plasticity exists since the birth of the person until his death; and that a radical improvement in cognitive[3] functioning – how we learn, think, perceive and remember – is possible even in old age.

“The brain does not just learn; it always “learns to learn”. In the view of Merzenich, our brain is not a soulless vessel that we fill; it is more like a living being, able to grow and change due to proper nutrition and training. Before him, the brain was regarded as a complex mechanism that has severe limitations in terms of memory, speed of information processing and intelligence. Merzenich proved the fallacy of these ideas. He came to the idea that, perhaps, plasticity is the main property of the brain, which has evolved in the course of evolution to give people a competitive advantage, and that this can be a real “miracle”. His most recent patents were granted to promising techniques enabling to develop language skills without tedious memorization. Merzenich argues that under the right conditions, practicing a new skill can change hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of connections between nerve cells in our brain maps. If you simply perform those dances that learned many years ago, it does not help you to keep the motor cortex in due form. So that your brain can continue to live, you have to learn something really new requiring high concentration. In fact, to introduce human (not an animal) into the study, does not require artificial rewards and punishments. Motivation for learning creates a natural for a person interest to a new, interest in life in general. If such interest does not disappear in adulthood, it serves as a “reward” for full-fledged work of the brain.

In the last decades experimenters actively worked in the same direction. During this time, the laboratories of Rosenzweig and other scientists obtained a lot of data showing that stimulation of the brain causes it to grow virtually by all possible ways. They came to the conclusion that mental training or life in stimulating conditions increases the total volume of the animal cerebral cortex by 5 % and by 9 % – the volume of those regions that are immediately stimulated by training. Trained or stimulated neurons form 25 % more neural branches increasing also the number of connections per neuron and blood supply of the brain.

The results of pathoanatomical studies in humans indicate that training increases the number of neural connections, thereby neurons expand, causing an increase in the brain volume and density.

The method of monitoring brain mapping helped John Kaase and co-workers to overcome the prejudice of specialists against existence of brain plasticity in adults previously disseminated among researchers involved in visual perception. He charted the visual cortex of an adult and then blocked the access to the information incoming from the eye retina. With the re-mapping he managed to demonstrate that only in a few weeks new receptive fields emerged on the map of the damaged area of the cortex. One of the reviewers of the Science rejected the article describing the Kaas study, considering his results impossible. In the end it was published (J. H. Kaas, L. A. Krubitzer, Y. M. Chino, A. L. Langston, E. H. Polley, and N. Blair. 1990. Reorganization of retinotopic cortical maps in adult mammals after lesions of the retina. Science, 248 (4952): 229–31. Merzenich assembled the scientific evidence for plasticity in D. V. Buonomano and M. M. Merzenich. 1998. Cortical plasticity: From synapses to maps. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 21: 149–86.

From the structure the researchers came to the search for chemical compounds (neurochemical system of the brain) that cause and provide work of adaptation mechanisms. The research of Rita Levi-Montalchini (1909–2012), Italian neuroscientist and the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine, led to the discovery of a number of nerve growth factors, one of which attracted attention of Mertsenih. It was a brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF- magic elixir of the brain. BDNF plays an important role in underpinning the changes occurring in the brain during a critical period. According to Mertsenih, it occurs in four different ways.

When we perform an action that requires the simultaneous activation of certain neurons, they secrete BDNF. This growth factor reinforces the connection between the neurons and helps to connect them together to ensure their co-activation in the future. BDNF also promotes the growth of a thin shell of fat around each neuron, which speeds up the transmission of electrical signals. During the sensitive (critical) period BDNF activates the basal nucleus – the part of our brain that allows us to focus attention and keeps it in the activated state throughout the critical period. N. Doydzh describes this process as follows. The basal nucleus helps us not only to focus attention, but also remember what we are experiencing, helps differentiation of the brain map. Here’s how Merzenich says about it: “It is like in our brain there is a teacher who says: “That is really important – you must know this to pass the exam called life”. Merzenich calls the basal nucleus and the attention system “modulating system of control of plasticity” – a neurochemical system that when activated, transfers the brain to the state of ultimate plasticity.

The fourth and final function of BDNF: it ends up strengthening key relationships – helping to complete the critical period. After establishing basic neural connections, need arises in the stability of the system and thus a lower level of plasticity. When BDNF is released in sufficient quantities, it disables the basal nucleus and completes the magical era of learning effortless. Subsequently, the basal nucleus can be activated only with emergence of something important, unusual or new or in the case when we make an effort to concentrate.

The idea that the brain like muscles can grow and be strengthened through trainings ceases to be a metaphor.

We live in an age of new technologies, speed and discoveries that lead to understanding the great importance of the human mind which makes it possible to control not only external physical processes, but also an opportunity of self-reconstruction underlying health (and illness) and longevity.

“Homo sapiens sapientis” is the specific name of the person – acquires a concrete content, which is not to be ignored. There are no pills for longevity; even changing his genome a person is doomed to illness and death in a relatively young age because his life is getting fuller of stress. Anthropogenic psychoemotional stress (APES) is a factor causing an invisible epidemic, about which at the beginning of the last century, psychiatrist Muller-Lier wrote: “… Our science has weighed and measured both the smallest and extremely large… while what is so strongly connected with our flesh and blood, what is closest to us and strongly affects our vital interests – human suffering and disasters – science has punished with complete disregard, blindly passed by them. The fact is so paradoxical that we must be amazed” (Mueller-Lier, F., 1935). While “stress – the child of the brain”, this quiet killer, often choosing the best, carried and carries away thousands of men, earlier than women.

The most striking, and probably the most powerful emotional force of Freud is a passionate love of truth, uncompromising faith in mind. The mind for him was that unique ability that could help solve the problem of human existence, or at least alleviate the suffering inherent in human life. The mind, as Freud felt, is our only instrument, or weapon with which we can get rid of illusions (religious shackles, according to Freud, are only one of them) and give meaning to life, to gain independence from the shackles of foreign power, and thus to install its own power on them. This faith in mind was the basis of his ceaseless quest for the truth – since in the complexity and diversity of the observed phenomena he opened a theoretical truth. Even if the results seemed absurd from the point of view of common sense, it did not bother Freud.. This belief in the power of mind proves that Freud was the son of the Enlightenment, the motto of which – “Sapere aude” (“Dare to know”) – fully identified both a person of Freud and his work.

EVOLUTION OF ADAPTATION AND

ITS SPECIFICITY IN HUMAN

The system of biological adaptation (SBA)

The system of psychosocial adaptation (SPA)

The system of biological adaptation (SBA). Adaptation – is the basic function of human life support, functioning and development. The mechanism of adaptation was discovered in the middle of the last century by H. Selye who named it “general adaptation syndrome” (GAS), which is an endocrine and humoral regulation of human psychophysiological state in response to changes in the environment. It is caused by a single mechanism, let’s call it “stressogenesis”, which is genetically programmed and passed from generation to generation.

This kind of adaptation is inherent in all living beings as a mechanism for implementation of self-preservation instinct and provided by a biological adaptation system (BAS). GAS can be considered an algorithm of the system which provides personality adaptation at the level of the body and actually performs adaptation of the body to the environment. According to Selye, it consists of two groups of effects: specific and non-specific psychosomatic effects.

This division is conventional, since the response symptoms is an interlacing of the non-specific with the specific. The non-specific stereotypical effects result from the activation of neural and humoral axes manifested through the GAS. According to H. Selye, stressogenesis is specific because of its psychosomatic response to the stressor which is a three-phase process: alarm reaction (A-R); stage of resistance – strain (S-R), and stage of exhaustion – asthenization (S-E). The body’s adaptation capabilities are limited, since it is all about the biological adaptation having quite rigid borders. It supports the first basic level of adapting a living organism to changing environment, that process being relatively passive: variation – alarm (first phase of GAS) – adaptation.

Example: A training session is under way. The audience is in a session situation, their attention, thinking and behavior are adequate to the situation. Besides getting situational information, the audience can also perceive background sensory stimulants having no adverse effects. Suddenly there is a clatter. All those present momentarily turn their heads towards the sound, half-rise, with a question on their face, bodies strained, eyes opened wide. This phase of alarm is estimating. In case the estimated situation suggests no threat, the stressor response is terminating at this phase and the audience laughing and joking (relaxation) return to the previous condition resuming training session. In case the situation is estimated as threatening (earthquake, hurricane, attack), everyone goes on the move, the behavior switches to rescue (“flight” or “fight”, according to Cannon).

The phase of alarm is realized automatically through the sympatho-parasympathetic neural axes. Anxiety is a bioelectric effect, so it is instant and unconscious. If the situation is threatening, the second phase of stressor reaction – phase of resistance or strain is developing. It is provided by endocrine-hormonal system which throws out stress hormones into the blood stream leading to effects in different organ-systems. This phase is multistep and multilevel. Each level is maintained by a successive introduction of hormonal axes: the adrenocortical, then the somatotropic and the latest – the thyroid. Stress hormones are associated with the concept of “adaptation energy” by Selye. Numerous investigations of biological adaptation have shown that a stressor reaction has an impulsive, intermittent nature, each time followed by relaxation. As a result, the third phase – the phase of asthenization develops. According to “adaptation energy” by Selye, long-time effect of any stressor will sooner or later inevitably result in losing the “adaptation force – energy”, or to its depletion. Adaptation energy always has a quantitative limit and each organism possesses a genetically inherited stock, expended through the lifetime, which can be considered as a component of individual stress resistance. This stock can be used rapidly or slowly. Depletion of adaptation stock of energy will result in ageing or death.

The model of stressor response includes the concept of “end organ” assuming any organ terminating the stressor response. “Anxiety made my head ache”; “The screaming boss made my colleague catch hold of his heart”; “The mere look of his body made me barf my guts”; “The mere recollection of my blunder makes me go into sweat and color”; “The mere voice of my mother-in-law makes me shake, I want to ruin everything…”, “My pressure is perhaps my daughter-in-law”.

These are examples of individual preference of an organ in a stressful situation, each person mostly having his own end stressor organ. The resulted somatic effects are a manifestation of activation of the SBA.

The system of psychosocial adaptation – SPA. Man is not merely a living organism: he has consciousness and speech, imagination and thinking. He has a unique ability to retain memories and re-live them again and again as if they were for the first time. Only man is able to endure a lot in the name of “something”, to wait and to hope for the future, while predicting its alternatives. Only man can develop the integrity of his life from the past, through the present, and into the future. Only man seeks meaning in everything: in objects, in physical phenomena, in facial expression, in words and deeds of other people. He is in a permanent whirlpool of physical life, in interaction with himself and his own kind. All this variety of factors and conditions places high demands on the system of adaptation and will naturally entail a need for improving and developing a new system of adaptation.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the biologically-oriented science has gradually initiated a psychological trend revealing the essence of man’s psychosocial adaptation using psycho-analysis founded by S. Freud. It was psychoanalysis that gave in-depth approaches, psychological insights to understanding what is happening in the psychic sphere, having discovered numerous mechanisms of psychological defense. According to Freud, after restoring the balance at the level of the body, man recovers his most complicated extra- and intrapsychic balance. The latter consists of the balance within a social environment with people, the balance of instinctive inclinations and the psycho-social instances that restrain them (vitally essential balance). Then man recovers the balances between the psychic instances themselves, balances of the synthetic functions of “Ego” itself as a specific adaptive apparatus of the individual. That is what comprises the system of psychological adaptation. Thus, man possesses two types of adaptation: the biological type responsible for adaptation of the body and psychological type which adapts personality. All intrapsychic processes are interrelated, dependent and interdependent by the biological adaptation system, but not only.