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American Morning

Do You Have an Overactive Cheerleader in Your Brain?

Aired June 04, 2002 - 08:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Time for this morning's "House Call." If you have an addictive personality, or you are a little obsessive, you might have what some researchers are calling an overactive cheerleader in your brain. But if you feel unmotivated, your cheerleader could be lying down on the job. Here to explain all this is CNN medical correspondent, and a neurosurgeon, I might add, so he gets this stuff, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

How are you doing this morning, doctor?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: How are you doing, Paula?

ZAHN: I never could do a cartwheel, so I was thrilled to hear that I have some semblance of a cheerleader in my head, on a good day.

GUPTA: Are there any obsessive people up there in New York, Paula?

ZAHN: Oh, no, no, no. They're all great. They're calm, reasonable, thoughtful, and the adjectives could go on and on and on.

GUPTA: Right, just like in the South, but there might be a reason now, as researchers from "Science" magazine point out, why some people might be more obsessive, why some people just may be motivated, and why some people absolutely might be just not motivated at all.

It is really, really cool stuff. You look at the brain and look at the fact we can measure thoughts in various parts of the brain now, using these fancy imaging techniques.

Let's look at an animation that actually shows how the brain would actually work. Here you see a neuron, and this is an example of a neuron that you'll find millions, billions of them all throughout your brain.

Now what happens is, in people that are motivated versus not motivated versus addictive, things like that, or obsessive, you'll have more of these neurons firing in various parts of your brain. They've actually been able to measure this in monkeys and are trying to extrapolate some of those results in human beings.

Let me show you here on a model of a brain. This is a brain here. And that's the side of it. Then you actually turn it on the inside, and it's actually this part of the brain here, which is -- the name of that area is not that important, but this whole area of the brain they're finding is more and more responsible for things like obsessive compulsive disorder, things like addictive personalities, motivation, or lack of motivation.

And what is more interesting is that they can actually find out in some people more of those neurons fired than in other people, so they can actually predict who might actually get out of bed easier, who might take a little longer, or on the bad side of things, who might actually have a hard time with obsessive -- obsessions or compulsions, or even addictions.

ZAHN: Can we move on to another subject that I know is equally important, and that is the issue of folic acid. What's the latest news on that?

GUPTA: Well, you know, this is clearly a good news/bad news sort of thing now, Paula. The folic acid, a lot of people out there know about it. In fact, 80 percent of women say they know it's something they should probably take around pregnancy, but only -- 70 percent of people are not taking it. So it is clearly something that is out there. The message is out there, but people aren't acting on it. We actually went out there and talked to some women, just random women, and found out what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it is supposed to help you in pregnancy, I think.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It helps improve pregnancy if you want to get pregnant, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Before I try to get pregnant, I'm going to go on a huge regimen of prenatal and folic acid, and take all of the vitamins and make sure that everything I put in my body is organic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: So as you can see, women definitely have an idea that it's related to pregnancy somehow. It certainly doesn't help you get pregnant. What it is, is a B vitamin.

And what they're finding here, what they found for a long time, is that if you take enough folic acid, it's going to greatly reduce the incidence of birth defects, specifically neural tube defects, deformities of the spinal cord and things like that. Folic acid can be found in all sorts of different foods, including orange juice, green leafy vegetables, fortified greens, things like that. But if you are of child-bearing age, you're thinking about having a baby, 400 micrograms of folic acid a day.

ZAHN: That is very important information. Like you said, pretty easy to accomplish. If you don't want to do it foodwise, you just do it in your little multivitamin.

Thanks, doctor.

GUPTA: See you later, Paula.

ZAHN: I'm glad to see the cheerleader in your brain was working today.

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