Why Zebras Ain’t Nuts[1]

Neurotransmitters of Past and Future

Anger, Trauma and Fear, and the “Power of Now[2]”

Copyright Charles Gant  MD, PhD © June, 2008

The Problem

  Our human brain provides us with amazing tool for survival and technology building. It permits us to observe, with astounding clarity, causal relationships between antecedent events and those of the future, culminating in forecasting faculties which are at the root of knowledge acquisition and the scientific age. Anthropologists estimate that the human brain is over 6 times as large as it “should be” compared to our mammal cousins[3] (see graph at end).  The term for this “braininess index” is called the EQ or Encephalization Quotient, which is calculated based on body mass and brain size. In other words, both a tiny shrew and an enormous elephant both have EQs of approximately 1, which is expected for just about all mammals.  The graph below fills in the time between Homo Sapiens (including Neanderthalis) and our distant mammal cousins by plotting the EQs versus the log of time. Fossil evidence clearly suggests that our hominid ancestors gradually increased their EQs over the last 10 to 20 million years.

  The enormous human brain is not only a powerful tool. It is capable of astonishing genius and creativity. Gifted humans have used this tool to compose symphonies, invent microcomputers, comprehend the implications of a 15 billion-year-old cosmos and write poetry and literature.  But like most powerful tools, the human brain must be used with discretion, because if it is applied to tasks beyond its design features, untoward consequences can result.  In the United States and probably elsewhere[4], over 25% of the population (over 75 million people in the USA), suffer from a DSM IV[5] diagnosable mental disorder.  Is there a relationship between a misuse of our large, powerful brains and the apparent unique human propensity to misuse this tool and suffer from mental disorders? 

  Our mammalian cousins and all animal and non-human species have Encephalization Quotients which are only a fraction of ours and they seem far less vulnerable to mental illnesses and addictions than human beings.  Perhaps they may be spared the consequences of mental disorders because their nervous systems are not as capable of analyzing, memorizing, and ruminating over causal relationships of antecedent events, to those of the future with great clarity and imaginative embellishment.  If so, such misapplication of our powerful tool, our human brain, may be a critical way of understanding why humans have an apparent greater vulnerability to developing mental disorders and to incurring psychological suffering. 

  From a psychological perspective, the down side of our amazing tool for genius, creativity and survival and technology building, may be that we can't seem to easily turn the tool off when it has completed its tasks and is no longer required.  Thus, big brains can be double-edged swords, with a negative potential of being obsessional[6], perpetually replaying the fears of the future and the traumas and resentments of the past, and an apparent vulnerability to compulsively[7] act on them.  This tool can then turn into a weapon of self-destruction, like a chain saw with all the safety features removed.  Perhaps this is an important causal factor behind the suffering of over 25% of Americans, those who have a diagnosable mental disorder. Their (our) powerful tool, the human brain, may have no obvious “off switch,” and like a chain saw, it may have the potential to cut the human psyche into “dissociative” fragments.

  How could our powerful and most precious tool also be our undoing?  Perhaps some answers may be discovered in an historical context - not in the infinitesimal span of recorded human history such as racial or ethnic histories - but far beyond this into deeper “roots,” our mammalian and pre-mammalian ancestry[8]. We have inherited an ancient “paleomammalian” emotional brain[9] and a reptilian brain from which the “fight-or-flight response[10],” also called the fright, fight or flight response, a hyperarousal or the acute stress response, is generated.  We share this evolutionary baggage with our mammal cousins.  Specifically, the locus ceruleus, located within the dorsal wall of the rostral pons in the lateral floor of the fourth ventricle is the principal site for synthesis of norepinephrine, the primary neurotransmitter which invokes the fight (anger) and flight (fear) response.  It was designed into our brains as a crisis survival tool and it has genetically been passed down through the ages to us. 

  Being primitive, the fight or flight part of our nervous system is rather “stupid.” It appears to be somewhat incapable of distinguishing between a real event happening “in the now” from a fictional or fantasized, past-future event invented or embellished by our recently-evolved, and far more creative cerebral cortex.  The ancient fight- or flight-generating locus ceruleus can be activated by thoughts and pictures about the past and future “as if” such events were actually happening.  It seems to be incapable of distinguishing an actual crisis in the present from an imaginary crisis which happened in the past or might happen in the future.  Thus, a perceived, “life-threatening” event caused by a harsh letter from an Internal Revenue Service agent can provoke a reaction from the locus ceruleus “as if” a true perilous event were actually happening.  Or, by simply imagining a financial crisis, even though it was not actually occurring, cascading signaling to the locus ceruleus could provoke its norepinephrine surge generating a fight or flight response “as if” ones survival were threatened.

  Our creative, huge brains allow imagination, which is capable of perpetually inventing, replaying and embellishing a past or a future crisis, real or imaginary. This explains in part our apparent far greater capacity for being and acting neurotic[11] or even psychotic, than any of our mammalian cousins.  Zebras, lacking a human’s creative memory or foresight, are less capable of such imaginary embellishments.  In other words, Zebras would be less likely to carry grudges about a lion’s assault for years on end (resentment) or suffer interminable panic attacks about fantasized impending attacks.  Zebras deal with fight or flight, a response that should last 15 to 30 minutes, and as a consequence they are a meal for a predator or not.  Our animals cousins live more in the present or “the now.”  But like our mammalian relatives, we have inherited their/our “paleomammalian” fight or flight nervous system which is designed to fight with anger to defend against an immediate threat from an immediate “past” (e.g., a competitor is observed stealing our food), or run in fear from an immediate threat due to an immediate “future” possibility (e.g., a predator shows up intending to convert us into a meal).  Our large digital[12], “neomammalian” brains are plunked on top of the older analogue[13] paleomammalian, emotional brain, perhaps cursing us with an amazing ability to run and rerun memories of old traumas and dream up creative, perpetual ruminations about awful outcomes, driving our older, emotional, autonomic nervous system into “chronic stress” or so-called “burnout.”

  For instance, if a zebra[14] is confronted by a lion, it has roughly 15 to 30 minutes to either angrily fight off a threatening young lion by giving it a good kick or two, or fearfully run away.  That’s the extent of it - the Zebra gets away or it is dinner for the lion.  Zebra’s don’t carry around the burden of huge, human, cerebral cortices, which have enormous memory capacity, imagination and extraordinary foresight, so they do not have the required intellectual hardware to spend several years replaying old traumas or fantasizing far more terrible encounters, over and over, stressing their old, emotional brain 18 hours a day with imagery that is not even happening.  Zebras don’t have the “marbles” to run a continuous “trauma drama,” so they don’t need medication, alcohol or drugs to anesthetize the replay of the past or the anxious fantasies of awful, possible futures. For Zebras, emotional stress is over in 15-30 minutes one way or the other, and that’s it.

The Solution

  If our big brained condition is an important factor in causing human emotional suffering, how do we deal with it?  Is it possible to use our prodigious memory, imagination and foresight appropriately and then turn it off?  If we can put a simple tool like a hammer back in the toolbox when we are finished with it, why does it seem so problematic to put our main tool, the human brain, away when we have completed the tasks that it was needed for? 

  The main question is pointedly, are safety features built into our powerful and useful tool, our brains, which can prevent the “chain saw” injuries derived from an apparent inability to turn it off when we are done with it?  Mainstream, modern psychiatry and medicine would answer this question with a definitive no.  From this position, that no inherent safety mechanisms or “off switches” are built into the human brain, the only remaining recourse, if the brain is running out of control, is to selectively injure it with surgery[15] (cutting), electroconvulsive therapy or ECT[16] (burning) or psychopharmacological medication (poisoning).  This “cut, burn and poison” approach, espoused by most conventional medial and psychiatric practitioners, may be a valid, last resort option for those suffering from a hopelessly malfunctioning, overactive brain which is perpetually replaying its past traumas or projecting its future fears.  However, an enormous body of information derived from highly divergent areas of investigation, both scientific and experiential, strongly suggests that “off switches” do indeed exist and can be readily accessed for most adults.    

  In fact, structures in the brain and other neurotransmitters systems besides norepinephrine have been found through various lines of research to be designed to activate “the safety features on the chain saw,” and many peer-reviewed, mainstream psychiatry, published studies[17] are now widely available to support this notion.  Subjects engaged in various psychospiritual practices, which have been shown since ancient times to assist in the extrication from the pain and suffering derived from a preoccupation with ones past (resentments and PTSD) and future (fear/anxiety), have been shown under controlled laboratory testing to possess structures and chemistry built into the very structure and physiology of the human brain, which indeed appear to be designed to keep us in the “now.”  Since for millions of years we have profited from the survival benefit of increasingly enlarging brains, permitting us to make tools for killing and capable of ever-improving methods of defense and warfare, having he neurological hardware to subdue aggression could arguably be a survival benefit also.  And if we do have safety features built into our brain which can prevent “chain saw” injuries, then it would behoove us to make the information about enhancing them widely available as first resort interventions for chronic stress and resultant mental disorders.  Thus the potentially dangerous “cut, burn and poison” strategies of conventional medicine and psychiatry should be reserved as last resort options for those who can’t, won’t or choose not to apply safer, first resort options. 

  These “safety features” appear to be somewhat dormant in most people, and various psychotherapies, spiritual practices, prayer, contemplative and meditation “techniques,” in one way or another, attempt to activate them.  Resentments or traumas from past experiences or fear of potentially awful outcomes, when perpetually replayed like a broken record, generates chronic stress “as if” these events were actually happening in the present, and pushes the “fight or flight response” to remain active far beyond the 15 to 30 minutes it was designed to be operating.  I am postulating that this is one primary mechanism and perhaps the main one, in the generation of the symptoms of most mental disorders.  Various psychospiritual practices have been shown in the studies referenced above to awaken innate mechanisms in the brain which extricate the mind from an obsession with the suffering derived from a preoccupation with an illusory past and future and bring its focus into the stress-reducing, reality of the “here and now.”     

  Like it or not we are living a series of “now moments,” but our large brains, designed to process past and future events in lurid detail, unfortunately have a tendency to over-process such information as if by doing so we can control and somehow change the unchangeable past.  We also project imagery about fantasized futures which could be awful and terrible (AKA “awfulizing and catastrophizing”), as if by doing so we can totally control the future and avoid all mistakes. If we were gods or God, perhaps we could time travel and change the past, or perfectionistically predict and avoid all future problems. But this belief in one’s deity-like powers, also know as Hubris (Godly arrogance - common theme in Greek tragedy plays), poses enormous challenges in the human experience.  Such tragedies are played out every day in the lives of most human beings to some extent, and excessively in over 25% of Americans who would quality symptomatically for a DSM IV diagnosis.

   The more we deny the “actuality” of the present and instead preoccupy ourselves with the imaginary past and future, as if by doing so we can improve our survival, the more we tend to suffer.  The more we stay in “The Now” and simply deal with our mortal, fallible lives one day at a time, or even one moment at a time, the less mental suffering we seem to incur. Actually this improves our survival, because the norepinephrine-driven chronic fight or flight is at the root of a wide array of medical disorders, including hypertension, heart arrhythmias, and many other disorders.  We do indeed have an innate but often dormant capacity which is built into the structure and chemistry of our brains which is designed to help us “let go” of the past and future, and “surrender to,” “turn over” and accept that the present moment has just about everything we need to survive.  This seems to be a simple, basic fact of human existence.

  Modern psychology and psychiatry have devised various strategies to deal with this human angst derived from having big brains.  Many psychotherapeutic methods are helpful in guiding people back to the reality of their lives where emotional pain lessens, away from a rehashing of a past which is over, and away from a future which we have little control of, and back to the here and now which we can do something about.

  Unfortunately, another ever-more-popular method promoted by psychiatry and the mental health fields, perhaps stemming from a denial or ignorance that most individuals already possess perfectly operational equipment to solve psychic pain, has been to invent diagnostic labels and diseases for the symptoms which come from a preoccupation with the past and future trauma-dramas, and then to anesthetize the brain with drugs to numb the emotional pain.  But such an approach, by anaesthetizing many regions of the brain, also lessens the ability to “awaken” the very innate brain structures and physiologies which are designed to extricate us from emotion pain, and brain imagery studies even suggest that the frontal lobes, the area most involved with awareness, seems to be the most vulnerable to such chemical manipulation. As fear of the future and/or resentment/PTSD of the past becomes progressively numbed by psychotropic drugs, and/or the origin of the pain, the inexhaustible human memory or foresight which replays the “trauma-drama movie” becomes anaesthetized, the naïve user of psychotropic drugs appreciates a lessening of emotional pain. Many are tricked into assuming that something beneficial has happened, and this is the mechanism which leads many into addiction to alcohol, illicit substances and prescription drugs.

  But unbeknownst to drug users, they simultaneously become increasingly incapable of activating the dormant, hard-wired resources in the brain which could have helped to bring them back to the “now” and which could have been their ultimate salvation.  Active addicts move farther and farther away from “living one day at a time,” a famous AA saying.  And as an increasing percentage of humanity appears to have become mesmerized by this psychopharmacological trap, and as their intellectual capacity to even understand the deception is also “dumbed down,” their attempts to benefit from authentically healing psychospiritual interventions are thwarted, and they are driven into the conclusion that drugs are their only answer for “hopeless” mental suffering. 

  As discussed above, the rationale for prescribing psychotropic drugs, is a false assumption that most individuals don’t have the neurological equipment to come to terms with their existential dilemmas and to extricate themselves from the suffering derived from a preoccupation with an illusory past or future.  We no longer hear or read much about so-called “existential psychiatry,” the radical notion that human beings exist freely now and have the capacity to choose what to do now with their lives today, however alone or emotionally distraught we find ourselves to be. Therefore, the only option available for humans who are incapable of “seizing the day” is to anaesthetize themselves with psychotropic chemicals, which numb the painful, unresolved memories or the awfulizing fantasies, as well as the consequent autonomic, emotional responses, especially fear, anger, boredom and PTSD symptoms.  This is certainly a valid approach for individuals who are brain damaged by severe trauma or dementia, or for those who may be hopelessly enmeshed in severe mental illnesses, in which case their entire life is cast as a replay of past and future scenarios and they do not seem to have the capacity to bring themselves back to reality, the present moment. 

  But those who have such severe problems are a relatively small portion of humanity, and to anaesthetize the brains of human beings with drugs who are playing with “full decks” on a mass scale as is now being done, mostly for drug profits, is in my opinion counterproductive and appalling.  The very structures of the brain, especially the dormant frontal lobes, which must be activated in order to fully extricate oneself from the pain-laden past and future, and to appreciate the “Power of Now[18],” are especially vulnerable to damage from psychotropic drugs.  This catch 22, or psychic double bind, damned if you do take drugs, damned if you don’t (because authentically, healing psychotherapy or meditation training is generally not offered as a treatment option), is the dilemma now faced by 10s of millions of Americans, and many more throughout the world.

  Let’s reconsider a possible solution from a bio/psycho/social/spiritual[19] perspective.  If an awakening of dormant structures in the human brain, designed to extricate us from the delusions of our past and future, is indeed possible, it behooves us to make use of them in ourselves and to share our experiences with others so that they too can benefit.  Many excellent self-help methods are available in this regard, and understandably they discourage psychopharmacology[20] and drug addiction.  However, the vast majority of such self-help methods promote only psychosocial and psychospiritual methods of extrication from the suffering of a preoccupation with the past and future.  Few methodologies address the biological and molecular dimensions of this problem, even though the “accepted standard of care” in psychiatry and modern medicine is molecular or psychopharmacological. 

  For instance, Dr. Peter Breggin[21] and many other authors, attempting to expose the fraud of psychiatry and the menace of psychopharmacology, essentially deny that there is any physical or biological answer at all.  Their position, while laudatory, takes a position that amassed scientific evidence about a molecular basis for brain function somehow does not exist!  They essentially deny that the brain is a physical organ, which like all organs of the body are dependent on proper nutrients, are potentially injured by a wide array of toxins and are regulated by optimal hormone and neurotransmitter functioning.  Somehow, nutritional restoration, detoxification and neurotransmitter balancing are seen to have nothing to do with the health and function of the brain.

  Nutritional restoration, detoxification and neurotransmitter balancing have not only been proven by amassed scientific studies to be a predominant issue in the health and function of the brain, they also have direct relevance to the whole issue of extrication from emotional pain stemming from the big-brained, human’s tendency to be preoccupied with an imaginary past and future. At least eight primary neurotransmitter systems (see table at end of article) are key players in this regard, and they are absolutely critical physiological components to the awakening process of the dormant brain physiology which has been shown to be activated by psychospiritual interventions (see above references). In various ways, they downregulate the excessive norepinephrine associated with chronic stress.  These eight neurotransmitters play critical roles in helping to extricate the mind from an illusory, painful past and future.  Optimal functioning of these neurotransmitter systems thus provides us with important therapeutic options as indicated in the table below. 

  The neurotransmitter systems are dopamine, serotonin, GABA, endocannabinoids, histidine, taurine, acetylcholine and enkephalins.  Conversely, deficiencies in these neurotransmitters, induced by psychotropic drugs (illicit, prescribed or recreational), nutritional deficiencies, toxicities, genetic vulnerabilities or other factors, will tend to thwart the downregulation of noradrenaline which can keep the mind “stuck” in the imaginary fight (past anger) and flight (future fear) response.  The benefits of psychospiritual interventions can also be thwarted by deficiencies in the fight- or flight-calming neurotransmitters. These eight neurotransmitters seem to be designed to ameliorate emotional pain (coping) by either playing an inhibitory role to lessen the impact of a preoccupation with the past or future, or to augment an experience of the “here and now” by enhancing joy and pleasure (for bonding) reward pathways.  The table below charts these neurotransmitter systems, their neuronal and temporal effects, the symptoms or disorders related to their deficiencies, and the nutritional interventions.

  Other neurotransmitter/hormonal systems, such as glutamate, glycine, aspartate and cortisol can modify the fight or flight norepinephrine stress effects, and both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical interventions have been devised to address them.  Glutamate excess and cortisol deficiency can both mimic the symptoms of a GABA deficiency, and in fact glutamate (excitatory) is converted into GABA (inhibitory) requiring the cofactor B6.  Noradrenaline stimulates ACTH which increases cortisol secretion by the adrenals and chronic stress can lead to imbalanced cortisol levels.

Business Concerns

  The alcohol, tobacco, illicit and pharmacological drug industries are enormously profitable because they have successfully hoodwinked both healthcare consumers and providers into a false premise, that toxic substances are beneficial because they temporarily alleviate emotional pain.  Drugs accomplish this by anaesthetizing the brain’s cognitive and emotional centers which are preoccupied with a past and future, thus artificially and temporarily alleviating the symptoms of chronic stress.  Most seasoned psychotherapists, meditation teachers and authentic healers have observed that such users and abusers of drugs are relatively incapable of benefiting from the psychospiritual interventions which they provide.   

  In a free enterprise economic system, maintaining illness while simultaneously controlling symptoms is profitable, especially when consumers can be duped into believing that anaesthetizing pain and stress is tantamount to healing.  Can the truth about human suffering be heard above the TV advertisements and peer pressure? Is it possible to capitalize on the truth and provide authentic healing for the number one disability in the world, mental disorders?  Certainly, information technology (IT) has undermined the attempts to hide such truth from consumers, and if economically successful ventures dedicated to providing the truth about human suffering on a widespread level are to be discovered, IT is likely to be at its core.  Such strategies would focus on two very different markets, healthcare professionals and healthcare consumers.