by Dr Mark Sykes | Oct 23, 2018 | ACC, Brain, cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical , glutamate, glutamine, Neurotransmiiters, OCD blog, rACC
The brain is awash with neurotransmitters. Knowing which type of neurotransmitter does what and where is a pretty important thing to know. For OCD one of the key functional circuits of the brain is...
by Dr Mark Sykes | Oct 16, 2018 | Brain, OCD blog
We will be talking about deep brain stimulation (DBS) for OCD but lets take a brief diversion first. If you were ever a medical history buff you may have heard of trepanation, From the image below you can see that involves making a hole in the skull. At first pass...
by Dr Mark Sykes | Oct 15, 2018 | Brain, OCD blog
Imagine a long plane flight. You arrive at Heathrow and accidentally picked up several bags belonging to an elderly pensioner. Nothing in the pensioners’ bags seem to be of use and if you wore any of the clothing contained in the bag would make other people look at...
by Dr Mark Sykes | Jan 23, 2018 | Brain, OCD blog
OCD is associated with altered connectivity within the default mode network (DMN). This is a group of brain structures that are hypothesised to work together to perform specific functions. These include: Self-referential mental activity (Gusnard et al. 2001)...
by Dr Mark Sykes | Jan 10, 2018 | Brain, OCD blog
The part of the brain that is the hub of emotions is the limbic system. It is hidden roughly in the centre of the brain. The amygdala and the hippocampus are two of the most well-known structures. Sitting at the top of this area is the cingulate cortex. It is shown...
by Dr Mark Sykes | Jan 8, 2018 | Brain, OCD blog
There are people who can balance very large stones on top of each other. It is a very unnatural sculpture that looks as if it about to fall. The TV presenter Kevin McCloud had a go at it. He stated the blindly obvious, that it was not an easy thing to do. This...
