LIKE many young girls exposed to the rural way of life in Jamaica, Ingrid Tulloch grew up satisfied with simple, but fulfilling things.

In her state of childlike bliss, she ran about barefooted, splashed about in the pristine water of the nearby river, and tirelessly explored the picturesque lush, green forests of Portland.

Life in Portland can be an endless adventure, and young Ingrid Tulloch sapped it up with famished enthusiasm every opportunity she got.

Born on the outskirts of the quaint seaside town of Buff Bay 44 years ago, the irrepressible girl and her parents, Henry Tulloch and Beverly Brown-Tulloch, moved south to Constant Spring in St Andrew when she was only one year old.

But even though young Ingrid had the glint of proverbial ‘bright lights’ of city life in her eyes, her rustic beginning remained ingrained in her DNA and she could not let go. And though she now had a new life in the city, the precocious girl would return to her parish of birth during school breaks to reconnect with her roots — the umbilical link, no doubt, very much intact.

She was truly at home when she made these trips to Portland.

“All of my time off from school was spent with my grandparents in Black Hills,” recalled Tulloch with a beam in her eyes.

The daughter of a bus driver, Tulloch has come a long way since attending “Miss Taylor’s prep school” and the Constant Spring All-Age School.

As an 11-year-old, she migrated to the United States of America embarking on a new course of her life’s journey.

And oh what a ride it’s been.

Tulloch did not waste time when she arrived in a strange country that was to be her home, and as soon as she was at the mature age, she knew education was to be her ticket to success.

And she worked two and, sometimes, three jobs to pay for her tuition in her grand pursuit of academic excellence.

The simple girl from Portland, a parish on Jamaica’s eastern tip, is today the holder of a PhD in neuroscience and psychology, with her specialty covering broad areas of study in genes and brain functions.

Tulloch, who is a professor at Stevenson University in Baltimore, Maryland, attended USA-based schools Hunter College and the University of New York.

“I did my post-doctoral training at the National Institute of Health here in Baltimore, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and then I came here (Stevenson University) as a professor,” she told the Jamaica Observer on the campus of Stevenson University on July 16.

“I have been teaching here for three years, and I teach the biological psychology course and that’s my premier course I also teach health psychology, anything related to genes and brain functions, neurochemistry, and how all of that influence behaviour and thinking,” Tulloch added.

The Jamaican-born professor says her area of expertise also covers the study of how the brain reacts and recovers in cases of drug abuse, especially where it relates to the use of methamphetamine (meth).

“I study how genes and the DNA function with the chemicals that are in the brain, resulting from gene function, and how those things are affected by exposure to drug abuse.

“Most of my work has been with meth, and it’s surprising to many people who ask that since I am Jamaican, why don’t I study anything with marijuana. But I haven’t done any marijuana studies… I just have not been in labs that do that kind of work,” explained Tulloch.

Now that she has her own lab, the professor of neuroscience may widen her study of the destructive nature of abused substances.

“Now that I have my own lab I can probably have more influence on what I study, but I have worked on a study that looked at nicotine as well, and now I am developing some studies looking at alcohol and that’s another big component and how it changes DNA functions,” she noted.

Tulloch claims that she has not only studied the effects of abused substances and their damaging impact on the brain, but she has probed the brain’s ability to recover from such exposure.

“One of the things that I was looking at was that when the brain is damaged people recover, and what might be involved in that recovery process. I looked at after-meth exposure how behaviour changes over time, and how that may affect learning and memory.

“I have looked at how that may be reflected in changes in the brain, so I looked at some of the chemicals that are known to be involved in learning and memory. I have looked at new cells because the long-term belief is that the brain does not produce new neurons, but we now know that is not the case because there is a special part of the brain that produces new neurons continuously,” Tulloch tells the Sunday Observer.

Meth, a powerful neuro-toxic stimulant abused mainly for recreational purposes, is said to kill “20 per cent of neurons” in the “motor skills area of the brain”, but research has shown that the brain has the ability to reproduce these lost neurons.

“What I found is that the part of the brain involved in learning motor skills, like playing a piano or kicking a ball, is damaged by meth exposure, but I found in my work that new neurons start to generate in that area,” Tulloch said.

The deadly drug, which is widely abused in Asia, Oceania and the USA, is said to possess the property to aid in learning.

“We found that meth can enhance learning and in some ways is good for prolonged focus and attention to help in learning… taking these meth-type drugs, you may have short-term enhanced learning and memory, but long-term you may see the effects that may cause Parkinson’s disease, and those are some of the things that I have been looking at,” said the Jamaica-born scientist.

But the deadly side of meth abuse cannot be over emphasised.

“It’s very addictive and makes you feel powerful, it makes you feel like you can do anything. It keeps you up for a long time, like people who do long-distance driving, and it’s great for weight loss because your appetite decreases.

“In the USA, at least, it was prescribed for weight loss. It was considered a miracle drug in the early days, like in the 1940s when kids were given heroin for cough syrup, but over time we have come to learn that it destroys the neurons, and in my research I have found that some of those neurons come back in very specific areas of the brain, but it is not necessarily a good thing,” hypothesised Tulloch.

Meth use, she said, is a common cause for high blood pressure, which could lead to heart attack and stroke.

“Meth use increases blood pressure, so you are at a high risk for heart attack and stroke. In fact, those are the main causes of death in meth overdose cases.

“There is also the deterioration of the skin after continuous use over six months, and they (users) get what you call meth-acne, they lose their teeth, and it also causes paranoia, as users think bugs are crawling on them and they start picking the skin and they start having big sores and they get infected,” Tulloch said.

Meth, as an aphrodisiac, she said, poses a whole new set of social problems.

“In terms of statistics, men who have sex with men because it (meth) increases arousal, increases libido, they (users) are less likely to protect themselves while they are having sex, and they are having multiple partners, and so it increases the risk of HIV.

“Meth is not highly abused in the black community in the US, as it is more rural, like out west. But in New York, for example, black men who are on the ‘down low’, black men who have sex with men who take meth, it was discovered that they were showing up HIV positive.

“And it was difficult for me, because often they were immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa who, because of their sexual behaviour, got disconnected from their societies and cultures, so they don’t have that support and they started showing up at these social services agencies HIV positive and very depressed,” she explained.

Tulloch, who has a 16-year-old daughter Jafira Johnson, said while meth use is on the decline in the USA, it has taken on epidemic proportions in other parts of the world.

“I think overall meth use has declined in the US, but worldwide that is not the case. In Africa there is a drug called Cat, which is a meth-like stimulant. It’s being abused in Asia, and Japan in particular has had a couple of epidemics of meth use, so worldwide it’s an issue and I just hope it doesn’t get to Jamaica,” she said.

Asked to make an expert comparison of the effects of marijuana use against that of cocaine and meth, Tulloch cautiously sized up the issue.

“I would say marijuana has less of an impact in comparison — one, because of the health component, and I am not sure that marijuana is that toxic. However, studies have spoken to marijuana’s effect on memory, but there are also known beneficial effects.

“In terms of cocaine, which is a bad drug, like meth it’s a stimulant and you can have similar symptoms taking cocaine and meth. But the difference is cocaine, unless you are at a ridiculously high dosage, does not have that nuero-toxic effect that meth is known to have,” Tulloch argued.

“When I often speak to people, I say ‘to me, if someone puts a gun to my head and say you have to take one of these drugs, meth is the one I am not going to take’. So if you are talking which is worst, marijuana would be at the bottom of that list, and I am not saying that because I am Jamaican,” she noted.

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