Human Physiology (the Brain)

The brain is the most intricated organ in the human body. It is very possible to live a full and happy life without knowing the first thing about the anatomy and physiology of the brain. Although, if one is interested in learning the components of the brain, on how the brain functions, or how it fails to function properly, you will be amazed on how incredible this organ is. The brain enables us to speak, imagine, or solve everyday problems. Whatever information the brain receives, that information will coordinate with all your actions and reactions.

When the brain is healthy, it will function as how it should without any problems. However, when problems arise, the results can be destructive. And one of the problems associated with the brain that still remain unknown to what causes it, is subarachnoid hemorrhage. According to MayoClinic.org (2019), subarachnoid hemorrhage, most commonly known as brain aneurysm or intracranial aneurysm, “is a bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain .”

Subarachnoid hemorrhage became an area of interest for me because my mom underwent an emergency brain surgery back in 2016 due to a ruptured aneurysm. After the surgery, the neurosurgeon talked to me and my brother and told us to get an MRI or CT scan to see if we also developed aneurysm. Then I remembered, my grandma, my mom’s mother, died because of the same condition. Due to this, I want to find out the genetics behind this condition and why only a number or people harbors an unruptured brain aneurysm.

To start my research on this certain topic, I typed in the words “genes brain aneurysm” in the Atkins library database then refined the results to “articles” and changed the published years to 2007-2019. Of course, this had a huge turnout, so I tracked articles that had “genes” on it and focused on the effects of genes to develop this condition. If this certain topic does not produce good outcome, I planned to also concentrate on other brain-related disorders such as brain tumor and Huntington’s disease.

As I was refining my search on my chosen topic, I came across an article titled, “Integration of expression profiles and genetic mapping data to identify candidate genes in intracranial aneurysm” (American Journal of Physiology: Physiological Genomics, 2007). This article talked about intracranial aneurysm which was identified by linkage. The researchers proposed that “identification of the risk-conferring genes in the loci has proven difficult, since the regions often contain several hundreds of genes .” (Weinsheimer, et. al, 2007).

They want to evaluate an approach to discover the pathways involved in the pathogenesis of the disease and to associate the genes that are responsible for the disease that affect particular tissues, are indicated in that tissue. They used the method of genetic mapping and also utilized microarrays to analyze the gene expression in humans with intracranial aneurysm and those individuals without the aneurysm.

This research article deserves to be evaluated because I want to know the results if they had done the experiment on different races instead of just focusing on Caucasians. I want to find out if there are any genetic differences within and between races. This might be important because there could be a majority of genetic variation between populations just within a race.

I have also considered using an article that focuses on a combination of genetic and molecular risk factors that can contribute to formation of enlargement and rupture of brain aneurysms, and an article about the epidemiology and genetics of intracranial aneurysms. These two articles can be good references, along with our Human Physiology textbook, my Genetics textbook, and the old time Gray’s Anatomy book to help me better understand my chosen article.

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