What would it be like to
discover something that no one believed could exist, to awake from a dream and
know how to prove everyone wrong? Otto Loewi proved even himself wrong when he
conducted an experiment in the middle of the night on two frogs, an experiment
that he might have doubted in broad daylight, transferring fluid from heart to
heart. One crazy, unconventional experiment and Loewi discovered that nerves
send messages by releasing chemicals. Imagine where we would be in science or
in understanding how drugs and alcohol affect the body if we still thought
nerves sent messages electrically.
Without knowing any of
this information we would not be able to understand how an imbalance of
chemicals in the brain can cause inhibition on reactions or cause a great
change in behavior. Its strange to know that these neurotransmitters come from our
own diet cause side effects when interacting with drugs. Take cocaine for
example, it actually blocks the dopamine transporter from reabsorbing dopamine,
increasing the effects of the dopamine which causes an increase in excitement,
alertness and activity. The fact that a person is actually directly affecting
their brain by adding these substances is ironic because other than inhibiting
it, there is no other way to cause the brain to do something. Before reading Biological
Psychology I had never even heard of the nucleus accumbens is the most
influential when it comes to the area of our brain that is most effected by any
illegal substances.
It is very cool to know that back then they had the capability and knowledge of what areas of the brain affected heart rate, and the fact that loewi had the guts and bright idea of collecting the frog’s chemicals released around the heart that affect its heart rate to place on another frog and test if it made a difference, which it did. It makes you wonder how much can be accomplished today with the technology and knowledge we have.
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