Posted by linkadge on September 17, 2006, at 12:20:12
In reply to Re: the brain, posted by bassman on September 17, 2006, at 11:19:32
>biological affliction that involves biochemical >changes in the brain (?)...the only thing I >think we're discussing is the mechanism.
If you subject an animal to chronic mild stressors (p.s. life is a chronic mild stressor), they develop the whole list of symptoms of depression, including REM sleep abnormalities, reduced hednoic capacity, increased anxiety and HPA axis dysregulation, psychomotor retardation, the list goes on. You can reverse a lot of these changes with antidepressant treatment. So what does the mouse think, "oh well I was just chemically imballanced thats why I felt so crappy"?>or does it really inhibit dopamine and >norepinephrine reuptake in the neural synapse?
Repeated studies have shown that there is nothing wrong with the dopamine, norepinephrine reptuake mechanisms in people with depression. Actually the only known genetic group of people with lower levels of the norepinephrine transporter was some family that had (no suprise) chronic tacycardia, and high blood pressure.
The amphetamines act in a similar way, by inhibiting the reuptake of these catecholamines, but in the end are we just artificially boosting the level of certain areas of the brain. What is the long term conseqence? Probably that after drug discontinuation, those parts of the brain have a very hard time activating themselves on their own.
Antidepressants are like mental steroids. After you stop them, your brain just shrivels up, and doesn't work well on its own anymore. For each of the positive benifits you attain, you will experience the equal but opposite effect upon drug withdrawl. Not only that, you will grow tollerant to their effects over time.
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:686603
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060909/msgs/686806.html