Defense Technology International - April 2008 - (Page 11) SCIENCE WATCH MICHAEL DUMIAK CURING PAIN AND FEAR Researchers are making strides in pinning down the physiological causes and neurological storehouses for pain and fear, with an eye to more effectively controlling them through artificial means. So springs a vision of the ultimate soldier: one who feels no pain and has no fear. The seeds for this fearless, pain-free soldier come from the dry savannah of Ethiopia. Living there in deep burrows is the naked mole rat, a creature that is impervious to certain types of pain, in particular, the pain that comes from acid. Teams at Berlin’s Max Delbruck Institute for Molecular Medicine and the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered that the mole rat’s painresistance comes in two ways. Receptors that deliver pain signals to the brain are excited by acid but route those signals to a dead end, or they don’t get excited at all. Researchers theorize evolution gave the mole rat this ability so it can live in its CO2saturated underground habitats. “It tells more broadly about pain,” says Gary Lewin of the Delbruck Institute. With the mole rat researchers can study an animal that has the same kind of neurons as other mammals, but with either a genetic makeup or evolutionary trait that causes its nerve channels to function differently. “It’s been a big question in the pain field for a long time,” he says: “How are pain-sensing neurons triggered? Here you can do deductions which will tell important information about the transduction of painful stimuli in more conventional mammals, including us.” Fear is more abstract and sensory. It seems grounded in emotion, but has physiological causes and symptoms, the same as love. And despite training, fear plays a crucial role in battle, says Gregory A. Daddis, a military science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a former Army lieutenant colonel. In an article he wrote in the July/August 2004 issue of Military Review, “Understanding Fear’s Effect on Unit Effectiveness,” Daddis cites British military historian John Keegan’s study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme in making a clear AviationWeek.com/dti point: The study of battle is always a study of fear. Last summer a group at MIT and the European Neuroscience Institute in Goettingen, Germany, produced a study identifying an enzyme, Cdk5, which “cements” a learned fear in the brain’s memory. Inhibiting that enzyme in mice helped extinguish fear. “This points to a promising therapeutic avenue to treat emotional disorders and raises hope for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or phobia,” says group leader Li-Huei Tsai. It also raises prospects of a pharmacological “cure” for fear. enzyme and receptor research show a revolution underway in biology that is likely to lead to more specific and powerful agents. “We’re going to have a better understanding of how primary pain-sensing neurons work,” Lewin says. “It’s possible you can design a drug that can stop pain at its source, rather than acting centrally, which is what morphine does.” But before military decision-makers go all-out to create a pain-free, fearless superwarrior, researchers urge caution. Pain and fear are survival mechanisms. “You don’t want to stop pain before it starts,” Lewin says. “People who are born congenitally insensitive to pain don’t live long.” Andre Fischer at the European Neu- BRONX ZOO/WILDLIFE CONSEREVATION SOCIETY The naked mole rat doesn’t feel pain when exposed to acid. Researchers study the mammal to learn the physiological causes and prevention of pain. Developing a deep knowledge of pain and fear are goals for military organizations, and the U.S. is already there—through its Pain Management Initiative and with seed money last year to the University of Michigan for drug-delivering nanoparticles. There are already programs within NATO to develop mood-altering calmative agents (DTI November 2007, p. 25). Producing an agent that combats fear would be the other side of the coin. There are, of course, everyday examples in this area—novocaine for nervous dental patients, Valium for jittery airline passengers. But ongoing roscience Institute says the fear study is as much about how memories are made as it is about fear itself. Normal fear is useful; in his view, treatments should ease anxiety diseases. Daddis says the U.S. Army is starting to devote substantial attention to the psychological aspects of battle—especially in Iraq. Stress effects are so subjective, though, he’s skeptical of a generic push against fear. “It’s best to build intellectual abilities which help reduce fear through greater competence,” he says. “And perhaps man is afraid of war and fighting for good reason.” I 11 APRIL 2008 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL http://AviationWeek.com/dti
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