A Picture of the Mind-Body Connection

In this article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Melissa Rosenkranz of the University of Wisconsin and her colleagues report on a functional MRI scan of asthma patients, which shows that activity in two brain regions that respond to asthma related words correlated with markers of their bodies' distress -- inflammation and airway blockage -- after being exposed to allergens.

By showing a link between bodily distress and the two ``thinking'' regions -- the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (a location that often comes up in studies of self-evaluation) and in the insula -- the researchers suggest a good place to look for the connection between psychological stress and physical stress.

Most studies of this sort work in an individual-centered paradigm: The model is a patient experiencing stress. Yet much of our daily pain derives from our human-kind thoughts: A woman in a sexist society, or a person of the ``wrong'' ethnicity in a racist environment, experiences a great deal of stress from her placement in a ``bad'' category from which she is not allowed the normal human escape path (which is, of course, to imagine one's self in a different category -- ie, I am an elder in my church, not an unemployed illegal immigrant.)

As scientists get a better picture of the mind-body connection, then, I think it is inevitable that they will get to the society-mind-body connection, and that the complete picture -- how mental stress leads to ill-health -- will include why mental stress is inflicted on some kinds of person and not on others.

Anyway, the demonstration here -- of a precise physical connection in the brain between stressful thoughts and asthma symptoms -- is an important development.