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Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

med.stanford.edu

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Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#21

Post by endisneigh »

disclaimer: I acknowledge depression as an illness and state of being.

that being said, if you take someone who is objectively "not depressed" and apply these same depression treatments, what would happen? some state of euphoria? heightened mood? happiness?

suppose that new state is now the normal state in which people are judged against. now, the before-mentioned person who was not depressed, may be considered depressed, relatively. so you now apply the same thought experiment again. clearly this can be recursively done infinitely...

such is an inflationary view. so my question really is around the cultural vs. biological construct of depression. what if it's ok to be depressed? this is not to say that we shouldn't be trying to "treat" it (and the symptoms), but I do wonder at what point do we say it's OK.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#22

Post by AndrewKemendo »

asdfman123 wrote: post #5

> “It’s almost as if you’d already decided how you were going to feel, and then everything you were sensing was filtered through that,” he said. “The mood has become primary.” This is 1000% what depression feels like, once you've properly come to terms with it. Your brain seems absolutely compelled to apply the most horrific, negative interpretation to everything that happens to you. Even when you understand it's wro…

This is one of the few times I've heard an accurate and concise description of what it feels like.

I like the metaphor of the spiral wishingwell. The coin/ball represents the level of depression you sink into. The gravitational draw of the void makes the spiral go faster unless you figure out a way to pull out of it and the longer you wait the harder it is to pull out cause it's moving too quickly.

So the trick becomes keeping the coin/ball off of the spiral

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#23

Post by e79 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #8
e79 wrote: post #3

It’s fascinating how many potential modalities are at play with depression. Serotonin, inflammation, direction of brain signals. This suggests that depression may be a label that points to one of many underlying conditions, which could also explain why it’s so tricky to treat for some individuals.

As someone who has more or less successfully learned to deal with depression, ADHD, anxiety, etc., the trick is basically doing everything considered "healthy." We don't understand all of the mechanisms of long-term illnesses like depression, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, etc. but we do know how to fight them: exercise and good diet. * Some processes in the human body obviously get disrupted under modern cond…

Agreed, but with the caveat that depressed people often struggle with making the changes they need the most. Similar thing with obesity. There often needs to be some kind of intervention, such as a medication, to offer enough relief for someone to break the cycle and start making changes. Willpower alone isn’t always realistic.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#24

Post by supernikio2 »

endisneigh wrote: post #21

disclaimer: I acknowledge depression as an illness and state of being. that being said, if you take someone who is objectively "not depressed" and apply these same depression treatments, what would happen? some state of euphoria? heightened mood? happiness? suppose that new state is now the normal state in which people are judged against. now, the before-mentioned person who was not depressed, may be considered depre…

What brain signals would you reverse on a non-depressed person?

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#25

Post by Choco31415 »

e79 wrote: post #3

It’s fascinating how many potential modalities are at play with depression. Serotonin, inflammation, direction of brain signals. This suggests that depression may be a label that points to one of many underlying conditions, which could also explain why it’s so tricky to treat for some individuals.

I went through a few different versions of depression myself and it absolutely feels that way. Each was caused by a different trigger, and the strangest thing is, despite all the tests doctors ran, everything came back normal. They couldn’t figure out what was happening.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#26

Post by supernikio2 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, TMS is extremely expensive and not likely to be covered by most insurance plans. Even with a decent PPO, I was quoted about $1k a treatment and they said I needed at minimum 30 treatments.

That might be the case today, but I reckon it will become cheaper as time goes on, if found promising of course.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#27

Post by PragmaticPulp »

asdfman123 wrote: post #5

> “It’s almost as if you’d already decided how you were going to feel, and then everything you were sensing was filtered through that,” he said. “The mood has become primary.” This is 1000% what depression feels like, once you've properly come to terms with it. Your brain seems absolutely compelled to apply the most horrific, negative interpretation to everything that happens to you. Even when you understand it's wro…

This is why the related concept of "catastrophizing" comes up so much in the context of therapy:

> Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.

Anecdotally, many of the people I know with a tendency to "catastrophize" later suffer from clinical depression. The depression only exacerbates the problem.

Even more anecdotally, catastrophizing seems heavily correlated to the usage of certain social media platforms in the young people I've worked with. I don't know which direction the causality flows, but I do know that people who consume a lot of Reddit and Twitter seem to think the world is ending and everything is terrible. They can tell me about every political scandal, every shooting, every tragedy, and every natural disaster that happened in the past week. Eventually they come to believe their news sources are representative of the entire world, forgetting that none of these things are happening to them personally.

It's a weird doom loop spiral. Even weirder is that many of the people caught in it feel convinced that they "don't do social media" because they're not on Instagram or TikTok, yet they consume hours and hours of doom and gloom social media like Reddit all day.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#28

Post by rideontime »

tomrod wrote: post #19
JohnMakin wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, TMS is extremely expensive and not likely to be covered by most insurance plans. Even with a decent PPO, I was quoted about $1k a treatment and they said I needed at minimum 30 treatments.

biohacking feasibility?

searching hackaday for "transcranial" turns up a few results. have fun! https://hackaday.com/2017/03/31/transcranial-electrical-stim...

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#29

Post by admax88qqq »

endisneigh wrote: post #21

disclaimer: I acknowledge depression as an illness and state of being. that being said, if you take someone who is objectively "not depressed" and apply these same depression treatments, what would happen? some state of euphoria? heightened mood? happiness? suppose that new state is now the normal state in which people are judged against. now, the before-mentioned person who was not depressed, may be considered depre…

It's not okay to be depressed because it sucks to be a person who is depressed. Being depressed is not a nice state to be in.

This isn't an "ooo society is wrong" type of situation. Sure there are some societal pressures to appear happy which can make depression _worse_, but depression is still awful regardless of those and we treat it because it's awful.

Re: Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way

#30

Post by franl »

spacephysics wrote: post #10
e79 wrote: post #3

It’s fascinating how many potential modalities are at play with depression. Serotonin, inflammation, direction of brain signals. This suggests that depression may be a label that points to one of many underlying conditions, which could also explain why it’s so tricky to treat for some individuals.

Fully agree, to me depression is a common symptom that the system of biological processes “outputs”, if you will, when some process isn’t running optimally. Stopped sugar suddenly? Inflammation from food you’re eating? IBS in general? Traumatic upbringing leading to entrenched “thought loops”? Undiagnosed disease? These all and more can have depression as a symptom. My armchair psychologist opinion is the DSM 5 categ…

Which behavioral changes got you there?
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