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Cortisol, surprise-enhanced cognition, and flashbulb memories: Scaring people with a snake screen and getting a PhD for it!

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Cortisol is a hormone that has a number of important functions. It gets us out of bed in the morning, it cranks up our metabolism in preparation for intense exercise, and it also helps us memorize things and even learn. Yes, it helps us learn . Memorization in particular, and cognition in general, would be significantly impaired without cortisol. When you are surprised, particularly with something unpleasant, cortisol levels increase and enhance cognition. This is in part what an interesting study suggests; a study in which I was involved. The study was properly “sanctified” by the academic peer-review process (Kock et al., 2009; full reference and link at the end of this post). The main hypothesis tested through this study is also known as the “ flashbulb memorization ” hypothesis. Interestingly, up until this study was conducted no one seemed to have used evolution to provide a basis on which flashbulb memorization can be explained. The basic idea here is that enhanced cognition with...
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Vitamin D deficiency, seasonal depression, and diseases of civilization

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George Hamilton admits that he has been addicted to sunbathing for much of his life. The photo below (from: phoenix.fanster.com), shows him at the age of about 70. In spite of possibly too much sun exposure, he looks young for his age, in remarkably good health, and free from skin cancer. How come? Maybe his secret is vitamin D. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble pro-hormone; not actually a vitamin, technically speaking. That is, it is a substance that is a precursor to hormones, which are known as calcipherol hormones (calcidiol and calcitriols). The hormones synthesized by the human body from vitamin D have a number of functions. One of these functions is the regulation of calcium in the bloodstream via the parathyroid glands. The biological design of humans suggests that we are meant to obtain most of our vitamin D from sunlight exposure. Vitamin D is produced from cholesterol as the skin is exposed to sunlight. This is one of the many reasons (see here  for more) why cholesterol is ver...
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Why insulin is key for intracellular protein synthesis

When you’ve just eaten some protein, insulin, glucagon, growth hormone and glucocorticoids increase because of the presence of elevated amino acid concentration (1p232). The insulin promotes the protein synthesis and the other hormones have an opposite effect (1p232). Growth hormone is anabolic like insulin, although counterregulatory (1p232). Insulin to glucagon ratio favoring insulin stimulates protein synthesis enzymes and vice versa (1p232). The insulin is needed for uptake of amino acids across the cell membrane and antagonizing activation of amino acid oxidation by some enzymes (1p206-207). Protein synthesis is also sensitive to multiple influences including stability of mRNA, amount of rRNA, activity of ribosomes, and (most important from diet), the presence of essential and nonessential amino acids in appropriate concentration to charge the tRNA and hormone environment (1p232). When amino acids are not present or not present in sufficient quantity, amino acid oxidation increase...
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