Can Epigenetics explain insecure people & an inordinant magnitude stress response (e.g. gun hugging)
One aspect of the legislative responses to gun violence being discussed is that of the addressing the psychological aspects of gun violence with the idea being to identify and treat risky individuals or at least to better understand what the contributing factors are that produce some individuals acting out with mass violence.
I applaud the recognition of the need to better understand the psychological factors that contribute not only to individuals engaging in mass violence, but also to better understand the psychodynamics behind the need of some individuals to have multiple guns around to deal with their feelings of insecurity - what might be called the "gun hugger" syndrome. What made me think of this is the people who have these stashes of a large number of guns and large amounts of ammunition. The poor things must be struggling with a hell of a sense of insecurity and fear of not being able to cope. It seems as if they can never have too many guns or a big enough stash of ammunition. This points to a psychological issue that is driving these individuals behavior.
An article, "Trait vs. Fate", in the May 2012 issue of Discover magazine discusses research that may shed some light on this matter. THe article discusses recent developments in the field of epigenetics studying such traits as over-anxious behaviors and lower tolerance of stress.
Epigenetics is the study of "changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype, caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence"..."It refers to functionally relevant modifications to the genome that do not involve a change in the nucleotide sequence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). In other words, epigenetics is the study of how environmental factors can produce changes in gene exression via methyl groups attaching themselves to DNA and RNA molecules and altering the gene expression which can even lead to these mythl groups being passed down to offspring.
The article discusses the work of two researchers in the field who have shown that a mother rat which is not attentive to its offspring can result in methyl groups attaching themselves to DNA molecules within the babies (hippocampus) brain cells, which then altered the gene expression such that the baby rats show more sensitivity to stress than those baby rats raised by attentive mothers.
"They began selecting mother rats who were either highly attentive or highly inattentive. Once a pup had grown up into adulthood, the team examind its hippocampus, a brain region essential for regulation of the stress response. In the pups of inattentive mothers, they found that genes regulating the production of glucocorticoid receptors, which regulate sensitivity to stress hormones, were highly methylated; in pups of conscientious moms, the genes for the glucocorticoid receptors were rarely methylated.[/font]
Methylation just gums up the works. So, the less (methyl groups attached) the better, when it comes to transcribing the affected gene. [font size="3"]In this case, methylation associated with miserable mothering prevented the normal number of glucocorticoid receptors from being transcribed in the baby's hippocampus. And so for the want of sufficient glucocorticoid receptors , the rats grew up to be nervous wrecks."
What is encouraging is that their research also shows that these effects are reversible. They took baby rats born to inattentive mothers and switched them with rats born to attentive mothers and found that the inattentive mothers babies raised by attentive mothers did NOT show abnormal reactivity to stressful situations (emphasis my own):
"the rats born to attentive mothers but raised by inattentive ones grew up to have low levels of glucocorticoid receptors in their hippocampus and behaved skittishly. Likewise, those born to bad mothers but raised by good ones [font size="3"]grew up to be calm and brave and had high levels of glucocoritciids receptors[/font].
Perhaps these people who hug their guns and elevate them to a place of such importance (and have caches of guns and ammo in their homes) are people without enough glucocorticoid receptors and thus show an inordinant stress response, leading them to feel frightened and insecure in environments which others do not consider frightening. This might point to a long term response to epidemic gun violence in the form of helping mothers in more challenging situations to raise their children in such a way that they won't grow up to be fearful, insecure, paranoic adults who need gun-security blankets to reduce their feelings of insecurity and to give them a much needed feeling of being 'powerful'. IF they didn't feel so weak and afraid inside, they wouldn't need a gun to give them an apparently much needed feeling of being [font size="3"]powerful[/font].
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