Today is my mother’s 76^th birthday.   Happy birthday mom.   She has one of the healthiest brains I have ever seen.   When I first started to image the brain in 1991 I scanned everyone I knew, from my three children, myself, my aunt who had a panic disorder, and even my mother.   Out of the group, my mother had the healthiest brain I had seen until then (and even now 17 years and 41,000 scans later).   As I grew up I benefited from a mother who was kind, compassionate, thoughtful, on time, organized, and consistently caring.   Certainly she wasn’t perfect, but I cannot remember times when her behavior was erratic or harsh.   She was and is amazing.   It’s no coincidence that her loving behavior was attached to a brain that worked right.   Her brain shows good, full, even symmetrical activity, especially in her prefrontal cortex, even at the age of 76.   A look at her life highlights her good brain function.   She has seven children (all healthy, relatively happy, and very productive).   She has been married for 58 years to my father.   She has a myriad of friends.   Plays golf at a very high level, was her club champion for many years.   She remains very involved in her children’s lives, she is adored by her 21 grandchildren, and is a very is active member of her church.  

Sometimes I tease my mother, saying it is very hard to be raised by a woman with a healthy brain.   It didn’t prepare me to be married.   She was always on time, organized, loving, firm, and consistent.   I never heard her yell at or be disrespectful to my father, who can be difficult.   This did not prepare me for the real world, I tell her.   How could anyone live up to such consistent behavior?   I was delighted to be able to show her brain scan on national television.   I was once an expert on the Leeza Gibbons Show on Alzheimer’s Disease.   I scanned an 85-year-old man with the illness.   He had multiple areas of severe decreased activity in the brain.   I used my mother’s healthy brain as a comparison.   She was in the studio audience when I showed her brain.   She was so pleased to tell her friends to watch the show.

A healthy brain is associated with a healthy, successful life.   Strive to keep your brain healthy.   Until next time, please know that success starts with a healthy brain.   Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong.   The good news is that no matter how bad you have been to your brain it is never too late to change your brain and change your life. To your brain health,

Daniel Amen, MD

12/14/07

A month ago I saw a man for the first time who had terrible obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety attacks and terrible relations with his wife and children, who were ready to give up on him.   He had seen 6 psychiatrists over the past 15 years.   He came to our clinic as a last resort, which is something I hear a lot.

His brain scan revealed the opposite of OCD.   The most common finding in the medical literature for OCD is hyperactive frontal lobes, the technical term being hyperfrontality.   His scan showed damage to his prefrontal cortex and low prefrontal activity, especially when he tried to concentrate, a pattern that more closely resembles ADHD.   Interestingly, in his history he said he was never better than a period in his life when he took diet pills or when he took a low dose of methamphetamine.   He had several brain injuries that were also never the focus of his prior treatment.   All of his doctors kept giving him SSRIs, medications to boost serotonin, to manage his OCD, but they never worked very well.   His scan suggested that we should stimulate his brain, to help balance his prefrontal cortex.   After several hours on a stimulant he felt much better.   After a month on stimulants, he said it was the best month he had had in 15 years.   How did I know what to do unless I looked?   It seems like such a simple, obvious concept.   My son’s ninth grade friends got the concept, but many of my colleagues still struggle with it.

On Dec 11^th in the LA Times online editorial section, Dr. Robert Rubin from UCLA blasted me for the editorial I wrote on scanning presidential candidates, calling my work snake oil and personally attacking me as an unethical huckster.  

I wrote a note to the LA Times and invited Dr. Rubin to Amen Clinics to see what we do, then call it snake oil! Our work is based on 17 years & 41,000 scans. Brain imaging adds more information. I learned much of our imaging work from mentors at UCLA, which BTW does brain SPECT at Harbor General and advertises it on TV. Most psychiatrists make diagnoses based on symptom clusters, just like they did in 1840. When Dr. Rubin said “buyer beware” he is right, of doctors who never look at the organ they treat. I believe there is a better way, so do thousands of colleagues, who have referred complex patients to us. This was not the debate I intended by the op-ed piece, it is even more important. Within 10 years it will be malpractice not to order scans in complex cases.

Until next time, please know that success starts with a healthy brain.   Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong.   The good news is that no matter how bad you have been to your brain it is never too late to change your brain and change your life.  

To your brain health,  Daniel Amen, MD

Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent.  

(Carnac holds the sealed envelope up to his turban) CARNAC: Sis boom bah. ED McMAHON: Sis boom bah? (Carnac rips the envelope open and removes the card) CARNAC (reading): Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.   

Today I was interviewed by a news reporter on my work.   He wanted to know why I thought brain imaging was so important in psychiatric medicine.   I had answered that question hundreds of times in the past.   For some reason today Johnny Carson’s character “Carnac the Magnificent” came to mind.   He was a “psychic”, who could tell what was in the envelope by putting it to his forehead.   The character reminds me of how most of psychiatry is practiced”¦.you go to doctor with a list of symptoms and he or she is supposed to know what to do for you without ever looking at your brain, even though we have imaging tools available to us.  

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and I once had a discussion about brain imaging in clinical practice.   She is a brain imaging psychiatrist by training.   She said it was unnecessary, because the brain has language and can tell you what is wrong.   I looked at her dumbfounded, because how is the brain supposed to tell you it has temporal lobe problems “¦when it doesn’t know?   By behavior?   It just seems so backwards to me, and she is someone I have high regard.   I must not be that smart.   I cannot read anyone’s mind, much less their brain function.   I want to look.

There was an article forwarded to me today by a friend, Earl Henslin.   A group of researchers from the University of Florida found that club drugs caused damage in the brain very similar to physical brain injuries.   Looking at thousands of scans of drug abusers, it seems clear”¦the real reason not to use drugs is that they damage your brain; and if they damage your brain, they damage your life and limit your potential.  

Until next time, please know that success starts with a healthy brain.   Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong.   The good news is that no matter how bad you have been to your brain it is never too late to change your brain and change your life.    To your brain health,  Daniel Amen, MD