fMRI connects city living with mental health

This is you brain on city living

I'm studying neuroimaging this week in my neurology course so clicked on a link that struck me in my Nature.com news feed. The authors of City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans conducted a study that showed functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) to prove that stress affects the brains of city folk differently. This sort of stress leads to physical and mental health disorders. In their words: "Our results identify distinct neural mechanisms for an established environmental risk factor, link the urban environment for the first time to social stress processing, suggest that brain regions differ in vulnerability to this risk factor across the lifespan, and indicate that experimental interrogation of epidemiological associations is a promising strategy in social neuroscience."

Areas of the brain that are involved here include the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) and the amygdala. The pACC region is involved in experiencing emotions and regulating behavioral as well as reacting to psychosocial stress. It may be the neuroanatomical structure that perceives social standing and thereby contributes to our mental and physical health. The amygdala is a part of the limbic system, which has been called the brain's emotional center. The amygdala is famously associated with fear and anxiety. It is connected to pathways responsible for defensive behaviors and it is the part of the brain that is responsible for emotional processing. In the city, these areas are always on alert. There, people are continually subject to the Shakespearean "slings and arrows" from bossy people and bad bosses. Saber-tooth tigers (cars, alarms, airplanes, and other such menacing noises) jump at them from every direction.

While the authors don't point to the flip side -- the physical and mental health benefits of one's proximity to a natural environment -- I'll do it here. Richard Louv might agree. As one who has personally benefited from re-establishing a healthy relationship with nature, I think I am physically and mentally better for it. I feel some sort of calming sense in my brain and body every time I get lost in examining the details of nature or get my hands, fingernails, and nostrils full of rich, fragrant soil. I would be in the portion of the study group that grew up in a rural environment and now lives in an urban area (population over 100,000). The study group that grew up and currently lived in an urban environment was of greater interest to the authors of the Nature article.

The authors conclude, "Our data reveal neural effects of urban upbringing and habitation on social stress processing in humans. These findings contribute to our understanding of urban environmental risk for mental disorders and health in general. Further, they point to a new empirical approach for integrating social sciences, neurosciences and public policy to respond to the major health challenge of urbanization." Ah, the far-reaching implications of brain research empowered by new neuroimaging technology.

Happy 4th of July!

July 4, 1996

Because it's been an emotional weekend and I'm feeling a touch of empty nest melancholy today, I looked for old photos of a favorite 4th of July memory. The one I've scanned for this blog post is from a "trip" to Colonial Williamsburg with my children to celebrate the 4th in 1996, an incredible 15 years ago. The years go by so fast, don't they?

On this day we took our picnic to Market Square and settled in for a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Afterwards, we roamed Colonial Williamsburg, making stops at all of the kid-friendly exhibits. We brought food from the kitchen and set the table for an 18th-century dinner at the Powell House. We sloshed in the brick-making pit. We drilled at the encampment. Finally, we watched the Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums and stopped to take a picture with a friend from our old neighborhood.

As we called it a day, the kids begged, "Mom, can we do this again every year." I stifled a laugh and said sure, I thought that could be arranged. My daughter was already a junior interpreter, so she did indeed spend more holidays there. In three years, my son would join the Fifes and Drums and spend the next 8 Fourth there.

How fortunate we've been to live in Williamsburg where we've been able to participate in the many opportunities that Colonial Williamsburg affords its employees and neighbors. What a lovely growing-up experience my kids have had here.

My daughter announced her engagement on Friday and my son left for graduate school in Tennessee yesterday. They're off on their own now. To them and others, my generation passes on the rights and responsibilities that are their heritage.

Waterfront Property

My 2003 book has been revised and republished as a Kindle ebook. From the preface:

"Waterfront Property was written in 2003, soon after my late twentieth-century environmental epiphany. A couple of years earlier, I’d bought my first kayak and, at a drifty kind of paddling speed, I had time to consider my murky Chesapeake Bay heritage. In the years around the millennium, I read many books and articles to better understand what was happening to the natural world. At the same time, I was writing business copy. Outside of the work day, I honed my skills by writing articles and attending writers’ conferences. I thought I’d write a novel about the environment someday, but the story wasn't coming to me.
 
"It took awhile for the idea to take shape. It wasn't until I interviewed a frustrated economic development executive in Newport News that this book popped into my brain. The guy I’d interviewed was dismayed by development and political winds that ruined the environment for short term growth gains. There you go. On the ride home to Williamsburg along Interstate 64 the plot thickened. A little bit of my life, a little bit of environmental development wisdom. A story jelled about somebody who suddenly asked, 'What the hell am I doing?'
 
"Like a lot of first books, Waterfront Property is a tad autobiographical: I worked in business but gave it up after my epiphany. I'm from a small town, Gloucester, not Mathews, but live a comfortable distance away from my old hometown in a nearby city. I worked in economic development for a short while. And like any work of fiction, this book is inspired by real experiences that are both consciously and unconsciously expressed. Although real people, places, and events stimulated me, they were just the seeds from which this fiction grew in my mind.
 
"In the 2003 version of this book, I used fictional names for the towns. In this revision, I am using local area names. But it's still fiction. My intention is not to paint any person, place, or activity as good or bad. I have willfully manipulated the facts in order to make fiction. But I did not invent the Gulf Oil Spill or Hurricane Isabella, so their absence dates the book."

Blueberries!

Blueberries at Bush Neck Farms

My stepson and his wife are quite the cooks. One of her specialties is all sorts of interesting jams. The family loves to go berry picking for blueberries, cherries, strawberries, and more. My husband doesn't have that same joie de vivre about the berry-picking experience, but because his son had just corresponded with us about their latest adventures with cherries, I decided to coax him along on a trip to Bush Neck Farms in James City County yesterday (about 10 miles west of Williamsburg on the Chickahominy River). We picked nearly 10 pounds and visited a farm stand to boot! Even though there were a few unripe berries, twigs, and leaves in the batch (I blame him, he blames me . . . ), I was glad to have him along because I wouldn't have picked as many without him.

I was anxious for the blueberries to come in because I wanted to give Helen and Scott Nearing's fruit juice recipe a try. (Regular readers will remember that I recently finished their book and wrote about it in this blog at the end of May. That was just after the local strawberries were done for the season but before blueberries were ripe.) The Nearings raised most of their food and the book included several of her simple recipes. One was for juice and because we are big on 100% fruit juice, the recipe below sounded good. Here's their description of the process:

Juice a la Nearing

"The glass jars were sterilized on the stove. A kettle or two of boiling water was at hand. We poured an inch of water into a jar on which the rubber had already been put, stirred in a cup of sugar until it had dissolved (we used brown or maple sugar, or hot maple syrup), poured in a cup and a half of fruit, filled the jar to brimming with boiling water, screwed on the cap and that was all. No boiling and no processing. The raspberries, for example, retained their rich, red color. When the jars were opened their flavor and fragrance were like the raw fruit in season. The grape juice made thus was as delicious and tasty as that produced by the time-honored, laborious method of cooking, hanging in a jelly bag, draining, and boiling the juice before bottling. Our only losses in keeping these juices came from imperfect jars, caps, or rubber. We found that two people could put up fifteen quart jars in twenty minutes."

Cooking blueberries with honey
and lemon

In addition, I made a blueberry cobbler and took it to my parents today. You'll find the recipe via this link to allrecipes.com. We had some warm with ice cream and it was delicious! Finally, I made blueberry honey jam. My daughter-in-law gave us some that she made last year and it was perfect. My husband likes his all-fruit jam not too sweet. I found this recipe and just finished making 8 cups of it.


Best ever blueberry honey jam
(makes about 8 cups of jam)

4 lbs. (roughly 11 cups) fresh blueberries
2 1/2 cups honey
1 Tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1. Wash and pick through blueberries.

2. Mix berries with honey, let sit 2 hours.

3. Put honey-berry mixture and lemon juice in pot. Boil on medium heat for 30 minutes, scraping sides of pot and stirring bottom as you go. Once the jam "sheets" it is done.

4. Sterilize 8 cups worth of canning jars, lids, and rings. (Boil for 10 minutes.)

5. Ladle jam into jars, leaving at least 1/2 inch of space. Put the top and ring on the jars and close, tight but not too tight.

6. Place closed jars in pot of boiling water until covered and boil for 10 minutes.

7. When done, place on counter, each jar should make an airtight seal.

We have another 8 cups of fresh berries left, I estimate. My husband will make blueberry muffins in the morning and the rest will last us a week as we eat them with yogurt or cereal or just a handle full at a time!