Your Brain Could Be Controlling How Sick You Get - And How You Recover

Hundreds of scientists around the world are looking for ways to treat heart attacks. But few started where Hedva Haykin has: in the brain. Doctor Haykin wants to know whether stimulating a region of the brain involved in positive emotion and motivation can influence how the heart heals.

Late last year, in a small, microscope room, she pulled out slides from a thin black box, one by one. On them were slices of hearts, no bigger than pumpkin seeds, from mice that had experienced heart attacks. Under a microscope, some of the samples were clearly marred by scars left in the aftermath of the infarction. Others showed mere of damage visible among streaks of healthy, red-stained cells.

The difference in the hearts’ appearance originated in the brain, Haykin explains. The healthier-looking samples came from mice that had received stimulation of a brain area involved in positive emotion and motivation. Those marked with scars were from unstimulated mice. On the basis of her experiments so far, which have not yet been published, activation of this brain reward centre — called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) — seems to trigger immune changes that contribute to the reduction of scar .

(Fonte: Scientific American - adaptado.)