5 ms·

Thoughts Can Fuel Some Deadly Brain Cancers

88 points by benbreen 12y ago

benbreen 12y ago
Here's the journal article this is based on: Neuronal Activity Promotes Glioma Growth through Neuroligin-3 Secretion http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415004298 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415...
CletusTSJY 12y ago
Now I understand why cannabis is a growing treatment for DIPG.
Flam 12y ago
The article does not elucidate and I don't have access to the full article, but is this for any kind of brain activity or a particular kind of thought - perhaps attached to high stress or anxiety?
- sp332 12y ago
  It just says that cancer cells near "active" brain cells are affected. So it would depend on where in the brain the cancer is. It also mentions one kind of cancer, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, occurs in the brain stem. Since you kinda use that all the time for stuff like breathing, it might not matter what kind of "thoughts" you have.
- gwern 12y ago
  The abstract says: > The synaptic protein neuroligin-3 (NLGN3) was identified as the leading candidate mitogen, and soluble NLGN3 was sufficient and necessary to promote robust HGG cell proliferation. NLGN3 induced PI3K-mTOR pathway activity and feedforward expression of NLGN3 in glioma cells. So unless high stress/anxiety lead to increased production of NLGN3...
tokenadult 12y ago
The National Public Radio report kindly submitted here to open discussion reports on the study lead author saying something that can fairly be summarized by the report title. The report goes on to discuss the methods of the study, noting "The discovery came from a team of scientists who studied human glioma tumors implanted in mouse brains. The scientists used a technique called optogenetics, which uses light to control brain cells, to increase the activity of cells near the tumors." So this wasn't a human study, and it wasn't an intervention of asking the mice to think more or less, or to think differently, but rather an intervention of stimulating certain brain cells. As the NPR report points out, it's hardly likely that physicians can recommend that human patients reduce their brain activity to keep their gliomas from growing, but perhaps a treatment can be teased out of interrupting the signal that leads from neuron activity to glioma growth. I hope so. I have a close relative who list a fiancee to a glioma, and that kind of brain cancer is a very frightful disease.
- jerf 12y ago
  "it's hardly likely that physicians can recommend that human patients reduce their brain activity to keep their gliomas from growing," I have to admit my imagination flashed to an image of somebody wearing a portable biofeedback rig that buzzed (or perhaps zapped) them every time they used the target portion of their brain, in an attempt to starve the tumor. It would make a really fascinating experiment to hook someone up to such a device, then see whether the brain considers that enough of an aversive stimulus to move the targeted functionality to another part of the brain, as if that part of the brain was damaged. No way to get that past the ethics committees, I'm sure, but interesting. There's probably an interesting sci-fi story in the crazy home DIY tinker diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer who just puts together such a rig anyways with no medical approval... if we don't already have the off-the-shelf tech to do that today we're pretty darned close. (But I've never really worked out how to move from "high concept" to "actual plot", despite a few attempts.)
  - shasta 12y ago
    > I have to admit my imagination flashed to an image of somebody wearing a portable biofeedback rig that buzzed (or perhaps zapped) them every time they used the target portion of their brain, in an attempt to starve the tumor. Hopefully the target portion of the brain isn't the part that responds to being zapped.
hnal943 12y ago
I lost the game
swayvil 12y ago
I know that obsessing about money can alter the physical shape of your brain, I guess this is the next obvious step.
thomyorkie 12y ago
I wonder if meditative activities that promote lower frequency brain waves would be useful here.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
siyer 12y ago
Stanford's release on this goes into more scientific detail, and has a nice interview with the senior author in which she discusses the background behind the work. http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/04/brain-tumor-growth-stimulated-by-nerve-activity-in-the-cortex.html http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/04/brain-tumor-gr...
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
This seems obvious in hindsight. We know that thinking causes physical effects on the brain. (I mean: half of our (limited) understanding of the brain comes from measuring bloodflow.) So yeah, of course something that's affected by bloodflow (like, say, cancer) will be affected by thoughts. The better question is: is there a strong enough effect from actual thoughts (as opposed to direct neural stimulation, which is what this paper uses) to cause the same effect?
- sporkologist 12y ago
  We won't know for several years, so in the meantime we'll all just worriedly try to reduce our general cognition through natural and artificial means.
PaulHoule 12y ago
I don't know if this really means what they say it means. When you aren't "thinking" your brain runs a "default network" that consumes about 98% as much energy as when you are thinking hard. That is, in terms of metabolic activity, it makes very little difference if you are "thinking" or relaxing.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
littletimmy 12y ago
It is interesting that meditation, insofar that it (temporarily) seeks to the rid the brain of any activity, would be a natural antidote to anything like this.
hackyhacky 12y ago
Similarly, it is widely known that an effective treatment for lung cancer is to stop breathing.
ende 12y ago
This sounds lile the premise to an Orwellian dystopia: the sugeon general is now requiring that all Americans stop thinking - for their own medical well being. Thought Limiters will be surgically grafted starting next thursday.
agumonkey 12y ago
What about grief ? A High School friend told me he developed tumor afterwards. I know first hand how it impacts all your body (including brain), and am wondering if there could be long term harm.

88 points by benbreen 12y ago

Here's the journal article this is based on: Neuronal Activity Promotes Glioma Growth through Neuroligin-3 Secretion http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415004298 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415...

CletusTSJY 12y ago

Now I understand why cannabis is a growing treatment for DIPG.

Flam 12y ago

The article does not elucidate and I don't have access to the full article, but is this for any kind of brain activity or a particular kind of thought - perhaps attached to high stress or anxiety?

sp332 12y ago
It just says that cancer cells near "active" brain cells are affected. So it would depend on where in the brain the cancer is. It also mentions one kind of cancer, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, occurs in the brain stem. Since you kinda use that all the time for stuff like breathing, it might not matter what kind of "thoughts" you have.
gwern 12y ago
The abstract says: > The synaptic protein neuroligin-3 (NLGN3) was identified as the leading candidate mitogen, and soluble NLGN3 was sufficient and necessary to promote robust HGG cell proliferation. NLGN3 induced PI3K-mTOR pathway activity and feedforward expression of NLGN3 in glioma cells. So unless high stress/anxiety lead to increased production of NLGN3...

tokenadult 12y ago

The National Public Radio report kindly submitted here to open discussion reports on the study lead author saying something that can fairly be summarized by the report title. The report goes on to discuss the methods of the study, noting "The discovery came from a team of scientists who studied human glioma tumors implanted in mouse brains. The scientists used a technique called optogenetics, which uses light to control brain cells, to increase the activity of cells near the tumors." So this wasn't a human study, and it wasn't an intervention of asking the mice to think more or less, or to think differently, but rather an intervention of stimulating certain brain cells. As the NPR report points out, it's hardly likely that physicians can recommend that human patients reduce their brain activity to keep their gliomas from growing, but perhaps a treatment can be teased out of interrupting the signal that leads from neuron activity to glioma growth. I hope so. I have a close relative who list a fiancee to a glioma, and that kind of brain cancer is a very frightful disease.

jerf 12y ago
"it's hardly likely that physicians can recommend that human patients reduce their brain activity to keep their gliomas from growing," I have to admit my imagination flashed to an image of somebody wearing a portable biofeedback rig that buzzed (or perhaps zapped) them every time they used the target portion of their brain, in an attempt to starve the tumor. It would make a really fascinating experiment to hook someone up to such a device, then see whether the brain considers that enough of an aversive stimulus to move the targeted functionality to another part of the brain, as if that part of the brain was damaged. No way to get that past the ethics committees, I'm sure, but interesting. There's probably an interesting sci-fi story in the crazy home DIY tinker diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer who just puts together such a rig anyways with no medical approval... if we don't already have the off-the-shelf tech to do that today we're pretty darned close. (But I've never really worked out how to move from "high concept" to "actual plot", despite a few attempts.)
- shasta 12y ago
  > I have to admit my imagination flashed to an image of somebody wearing a portable biofeedback rig that buzzed (or perhaps zapped) them every time they used the target portion of their brain, in an attempt to starve the tumor. Hopefully the target portion of the brain isn't the part that responds to being zapped.

hnal943 12y ago

I lost the game

swayvil 12y ago

I know that obsessing about money can alter the physical shape of your brain, I guess this is the next obvious step.

thomyorkie 12y ago

I wonder if meditative activities that promote lower frequency brain waves would be useful here.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

siyer 12y ago

Stanford's release on this goes into more scientific detail, and has a nice interview with the senior author in which she discusses the background behind the work. http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/04/brain-tumor-growth-stimulated-by-nerve-activity-in-the-cortex.html http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/04/brain-tumor-gr...

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

This seems obvious in hindsight. We know that thinking causes physical effects on the brain. (I mean: half of our (limited) understanding of the brain comes from measuring bloodflow.) So yeah, of course something that's affected by bloodflow (like, say, cancer) will be affected by thoughts. The better question is: is there a strong enough effect from actual thoughts (as opposed to direct neural stimulation, which is what this paper uses) to cause the same effect?

sporkologist 12y ago
We won't know for several years, so in the meantime we'll all just worriedly try to reduce our general cognition through natural and artificial means.

PaulHoule 12y ago

I don't know if this really means what they say it means. When you aren't "thinking" your brain runs a "default network" that consumes about 98% as much energy as when you are thinking hard. That is, in terms of metabolic activity, it makes very little difference if you are "thinking" or relaxing.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

littletimmy 12y ago

It is interesting that meditation, insofar that it (temporarily) seeks to the rid the brain of any activity, would be a natural antidote to anything like this.

hackyhacky 12y ago

Similarly, it is widely known that an effective treatment for lung cancer is to stop breathing.

ende 12y ago

This sounds lile the premise to an Orwellian dystopia: the sugeon general is now requiring that all Americans stop thinking - for their own medical well being. Thought Limiters will be surgically grafted starting next thursday.

agumonkey 12y ago

What about grief ? A High School friend told me he developed tumor afterwards. I know first hand how it impacts all your body (including brain), and am wondering if there could be long term harm.