The Planets

Saturday is named after Saturn, the greek Chronos, the god of time. That's the day (two days ago) when I went to see the performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets at the Houston Symphony, which promised a movie montage of high-definition pictures from space telescopes, projected above the orchestra, to illustrate the subject matter.

For a while, I didn't think I was going to make it. After consulting with my newly-moved-to-Houston friends David and Brenda to gauge their interest, I called to get three tickets, expecting that it would be fairly easy as usual, and was told that there were only single obstructed-view tickets left for all three remaining performances. So we gave up on the idea of going together on Sunday, but by Saturday evening I resolved to try my old Boston trick. I dusted off my cardboard sign that reads "Looking to Buy ONE Ticket," the one that got me into multiple performances at the ICA on the waterfront there, and went to Jones Hall.

I should have known it was my lucky day when I managed to parallel-park in a space between two cars that was, I swear (I measured it) 4" (10 cm) longer than my car. Of course, strictly speaking, that's pretty impossible. But not to an ex-Paris driver, and not considering the elasticity of car bumpers and of tires: you can (gently) touch the car behind, push a little, then move forward, touch the car ahead, push a little... and pretty soon you're in. Still, you have to get exactly the right angle, and the planets must have been with me.

The very nice usher at Jones Hall told me, within a minute of my taking position in front of the entrance, that there was no way she could let me stand there with my sign. But she said not to worry, she was sure she could do something for me. And sure enough, ten minutes later, she had secured a ticket that someone turned in because someone in their party couldn't come, and she gave it to me! So not only did I get a seat, but it was free. And I even had time left to munch on the tiny overpriced cheese-and-fruit plate sold by the Jones Hall concessionaire. The seat was at the rightmost end of an orchestra row, and the view was in fact slightly obstructed by the underside of the boxes, but barely -- just a little sliver missing at the top of the projection screen, and an excellent view of the stage.

The concert started with the Scherzo fantastique by Stravinsky, whom I tolerate reasonably well. It was followed by Timbres, espace, mouvement (la nuit étoilée) by Dutilleux, and that was much harder for me. But the Holst suite made it up. It was only the second time I heard the entire suite (classical radio stations usually just play the most famous movement, the fourth one, Jupiter - Bringer of Jollity), the first time also being live. I was wondering whether the projection of the film would add to or detract from the musical experience, and I am satisfied that it was an excellent addition. Duncan Copp's movie, using NASA footage from various interplanetary probes as well as CGI, is visually stunning. That is also got the Symphony to give several sold-out performances is very comforting, given how difficult it usually is for classical orchestras to balance their budget and to attract a younger-than-70 audience.

And my car didn't have any more scratches when I retrieved it than it had before — it just took another dozen or so back-and-forth maneuvers to extract it from its parking spot.

Addiction: Conflict Between Brain Circuits

This was the title of a lecture given today at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. I heard about on National Public Radio a few weeks ago, made a note to visit the Web site, registered and drove down from Houston to Galveston today to attend. In case you don't know why I have such a keen interest in the science of addiction, my November 10, 2009 post will explain it.

Dr. Nora Volkow, the speaker is the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Quoting from her biography:

"Dr. Volkow's work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain. As a research psychiatrist and scientist, Dr. Volkow pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate the toxic effects of drugs and their addictive properties. Her studies have documented changes in the dopamine system affecting the actions of frontal brain regions involved with motivation, drive, and pleasure and the decline of brain dopamine function with age."

Of course, I couldn't resist taking some notes. This is just a sampling of all the interesting things that were said.

• After someone takes either food or amphetamines, you can see the same increase if dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. But drugs don't have the same satiating effects as food.
• Experiments can be conducted on humans using methylphenidate, which mimics the effects of cocaine. It also blocks the re-uptake of dopamine, causing the receptors to be flooded with the stuff. The "high" effect can be reported by the subject, and happens only if the substance is administered intravenously; if it is taken orally, it gets into the brain much more slowly and you see no effect at all, even allowing for a much longer period of time. So the dynamic aspect of drug administration is key.
• Different drugs have different clearance rates, and the "high" seems related to the rate of change of dopamine concentration, not to the absolute level. So if the level of dopamine goes up rapidly, then decays very slowly, the "high" does not persist, but starts dropping quickly as soon as the dopamine level has reached its maximum.
• Her imaging techniques allow her to study the effects of drugs on separate brain functions located in different places: the executive function (decision-making); inhibitory control (which allows a non-alcoholic to decide not to have one more drink, but is evidently damaged in the alcoholic); motivation and drive; memory and learning.
• Tests on animals who have been trained to push a lever to self-administer a drug have shown that causing the overexpression of dopamine D2 receptors causes the rats to lower their usage. As the substance injected to cause this overexpression wears off, over a period of 10 days or so, drug self-administration progressively returns to its previous level.
  
• Changes in dopamine receptors in the striatum correlate with changes in glucose metabolism in specific other parts of the brain, such as the orbital frontal cortex, which are also the effects observed in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Another similarity between OCD and addiction is that when the reinforcement ceases (e.g., a lab rat is no longer given food when he is pressing the lever he had associated with this reward, or an addict no longer gets pleasure from his drug), he/it is still compulsively practicing the behavior.
• In the non-addicted brain, the ability to control actions is decreased by disruptions, such as anger, that affect the prefrontal cortex. That's why, when you just heard that your flight is canceled, you're more likely to go ahead and have that chocolate chip cookie that you had resisted earlier.