Deans' stroke musings: Dietary Tyrosine/Phenylalanine Depletion Effects on Behavioral And Brain Signatures of Human Motivational Processing

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Dietary Tyrosine/Phenylalanine Depletion Effects on Behavioral And Brain Signatures of Human Motivational Processing

I 'm sure your doctor wants to make sure you are motivated to get to 100% recovery. And they'll do anything to get you there including reading research like this. (snort,snort)
http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/23995581

(PMID:23995581)

Bjork JM, Grant SJ, Chen G, Hommer DW

Division of Clinical Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Neuropsychopharmacology : Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology [2013]

Type: Journal Article

Abstract

Highlight Terms

Gene Ontology(2) Diseases(1) Chemicals(2)

Dopamine (DA) neurotransmission is critical for motivational processing. We assessed whether disruption of DA synthesis in healthy controls using an amino acid beverage devoid of catecholamine precursors (tyrosine-phenylalanine depletion (TPD)) would blunt recruitment of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) by rewards. Sixteen controls ingested each of a tyr/phe-depleting beverage (DEP) or a tyr/phe-balanced (BAL) control beverage in two laboratory visits. Five hours after consumption of each drink, subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed anticipatory cues to respond to a target to either win money or avoid losing money. TPD did not exert main effects on mood or on task behavior, but affected brain activation. In right NAcc, TPD blunted activation by anticipation of high rewards. In left NAcc, recruitment anticipating high rewards was modulated by individual differences in mood change across the DEP drink day, where subjects whose mood worsened following TPD (relative to within-day mood change under BAL conditions) also showed lower activation under DEP conditions relative to BAL conditions. Exploratory analysis indicated that TPD qualitatively blunted the voxel-wise spatial extent of suprathreshold activation by reward anticipation. Finally, loss outcomes activated anterior insula under DEP conditions but not under BAL conditions. These data indicate that: 1) dietary depletion of catacholamine precursors will blunt dopaminergic mesolimbic activity, and 2) in controls, synthetic pathways of this neurocircuitry maintain sufficient buffering capacity to resist an effect on motivated behavior. Additional studies are needed to determine if clinical populations would show similar resistance to behavioral effects of TPD.Neuropsychopharmacology accepted article preview online, 2 September 2013. doi:10.1038/npp.2013.232.