你的大脑可以控制你生病的程度——以及你如何康复

Your brain could be controlling how sick you get — and how you recover

原载《自然》杂志第614期（2023年2月22日）

<Nature> Issue 614 (February 22, 2023)

【节录】全世界数百名科学家正在寻找治疗心脏病的方法。 但很少有人像 Hedva Haykin 那样开始：研究大脑。

Haykin是位于海法的以色列理工学院 Technion 的博士生，他想知道刺激大脑中与积极情绪和动机有关的区域是否会影响心脏的愈合。

去年年底，在一个没有窗户的小显微镜室里，她从一个薄薄的黑盒子里一张一张地取出载玻片。上面是心脏切片，没有南瓜子那么大，来自经历过心脏病发作的老鼠。 在显微镜下，一些样本明显被梗塞后留下的疤痕损坏。 其他人则在健康的红染细胞条纹中仅显示可见的斑点损伤。

Haykin解释说，心脏外观的差异源于大脑。 看起来更健康的样本来自小鼠，它们接受了与积极情绪和动机有关的大脑区域的刺激。 那些标有疤痕的是来自未受刺激的小鼠。

Haykin和她在以色列理工学院的导师——神经免疫学家Asya Rolls和心脏病专家Lior Gepstein——正试图弄清楚这是如何发生的。根据他们迄今为止尚未发表的实验，这个大脑奖赏中心——称为腹侧被盖区 (VTA)——的激活似乎会引发有助于减少疤痕组织的免疫变化。

这项研究源于数十年的研究，这些研究指出一个人的心理状态对其心脏健康的影响。在一种被称为“心碎综合症”的众所周知的情况下，一个极度紧张的事件会产生心脏病发作的症状——而且在极少数情况下可能是致命的。 相反，研究表明，积极的心态可以为心血管疾病患者带来更好的结果。 但这些联系背后的机制仍然难以捉摸。

…………

[excerpt] Hundreds of scientists around the world are looking for ways to treat heart attacks. But few started where Hedva Haykin has: in the brain.

Haykin, a doctoral student at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, 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, windowless 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 speckles 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.

Haykin, alongside her supervisors at the Technion — Asya Rolls, a neuroimmunologist, and Lior Gepstein, a cardiologist — are trying to work out exactly how this happens. On the basis of their 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 tissue.

This study has its roots in decades of research pointing to the contribution of a person’s psychological state to their heart health1. In a well-known condition known as ‘broken-heart syndrome’, an extremely stressful event can generate the symptoms of a heart attack — and can, in rare cases, be fatal. Conversely, studies have suggested that a positive mindset can lead to better outcomes in those with cardiovascular disease. But the mechanisms behind these links remain elusive.

……

原文见：Diana Kwon (2023). Your brain could be controlling how sick you get — and how you recover. Mature, 614: 613-615. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00509-z

（需要英文原文的朋友，请联系微信：millerdeng95）