31–40 of 68 posts
I was under the impression that this is a pretty known effect. I used to take anti-depressants along with CNS stimulants and this definitely was something that my psychiatrist and my other doctors mentioned to me and considered when choosing an appropriate dosage.
They don't appear to have run a control with caffeine alone. Caffeine is a well-established athletic performance-enhancing drug in its own right. Isn't this a serious flaw with the swim-test portion of this study?
Figure 1 shows that 5,10,20,50 mg/kg caffeine has an effect on the forced-swim test, but not as strong as imipramine. Table 1 shows that the same doses of caffeine don’t make the mice more active in their cage, which might help address your concern.
As a former rat owner, and a former locked-up felon, if a rat (or human) is in a cage, it tends to know and act like it's in one. Caffeine isn't going to make you suddenly more energetic in your cage unless you've got some other underlying issues, so that part of the study is instantly suspect.
The methodology here is typical for testing antidepressants with animals but many people find it somewhat horrifying: First the mice are made to be depressed by exposing them to constant sounds of birds screeching and other predators. Next some are given the intervention. The level of depression is then measured by putting the mice in a container of deep water from which there is no escape, and timing how long until…
I’m sorry but I’m having trouble believing the second part. Every university I’ve worked at has extensive training and monitoring for animal research, and there’s no way any of them would have approved what you’re describing. Screwing around with something like this could get the entire university’s federal funding cut off, and so they take compliance very seriously. Secondly, the brains are often collected as part o…
In both cases, zero or less value is attributed to the lives and minds that are being assaulted and extinguished on a loop (though the value is below zero in the Nazi case and sits roughly at zero in the animal experiment case). This isn't entirely fair, since I'm sure most researchers do attempt to prevent animal suffering from being the most utterly barbaric it can be due to ethical rather than selfish reasons, but I think anything that's moderately barbaric or below is still considered justifiable in their minds and I think attempts to "soften" it do mostly fall into the selfish defense mechanism category.
I understand the great benefit to scientific progress afforded by such experiments, but there was some long-term benefit from human experimentation during WWII, as well, and there probably could've been much more future benefit if those regimes had won.
The methodology here is typical for testing antidepressants with animals but many people find it somewhat horrifying: First the mice are made to be depressed by exposing them to constant sounds of birds screeching and other predators. Next some are given the intervention. The level of depression is then measured by putting the mice in a container of deep water from which there is no escape, and timing how long until…
If any PhD is making up ways to kill their animals, then they either didn’t pay attention or work for a crappy lab.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Figure 1 shows that 5,10,20,50 mg/kg caffeine has an effect on the forced-swim test, but not as strong as imipramine. Table 1 shows that the same doses of caffeine don’t make the mice more active in their cage, which might help address your concern.
"Table 1 shows that the same doses of caffeine don’t make the mice more active in their cage" As a former rat owner, and a former locked-up felon, if a rat (or human) is in a cage, it tends to know and act like it's in one. Caffeine isn't going to make you suddenly more energetic in your cage unless you've got some other underlying issues, so that part of the study is instantly suspect.
Regardless, that could certainly explain the caffeine-only part, but it’s harder to square with the caffeine*anti-depressant effect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I never used alcohol, some many number of years ago my drug cocktail used to not be so dissimilar from yours. All I can say is that, for me personally, and many others, being able to eventually move off that chemical dependency has resulted in richer and healthier days. This isn't a judgement on what works for you, or a suggestion that you do some radical change. Just something to chew on in the back of your mi…
There’s evidence that all of the effectiveness of antidepressants is due to the placebo effect. Contrast this with bipolar or schizophrenia where medications actually seem to benefit vs placebo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sorry but I’m having trouble believing the second part. Every university I’ve worked at has extensive training and monitoring for animal research, and there’s no way any of them would have approved what you’re describing. Screwing around with something like this could get the entire university’s federal funding cut off, and so they take compliance very seriously. Secondly, the brains are often collected as part o…
I understand the parent is wrong and that correcting them was needed, but I find all this hand-wringing about ethics in animal experiments kind of absurd, since it's so obviously fundamentally unethical in the first place (or at least I know of none that aren't unethical). I suspect it's mostly just a defense mechanism to shield the human mind from the trauma of continuously inflicting mass suffering and death, much…
I don’t know any researcher that likes sacrificing animals though every single one is painfully aware of the moral weight. They also go out of their way to minimize suffering, for ethical reasons, for selfish reasons, and even to improve the quality of the data. The reason I jumped down the parent's throat is because it reinforces the mistaken idea that scientists are okay with “moderately barbaric” things and indifferent to suffering. We aren’t!
And what’s the alternative to animal research? Computational modeling isn’t there yet and in vitro experiments have pretty stark limitations too. In any case, both would need animal data to determine if they’re correct. Waiting for another Nazi regime[0], as you proposed(!), doesn’t seem like a viable—-or ethical—-option.
[0] Incidentally, I have read that most of that “data” was scientifically useless, not just because of its moral provenance, but also because the stuff that was done was more akin to torture than controlled research.
I was under the impression that this is a pretty known effect. I used to take anti-depressants along with CNS stimulants and this definitely was something that my psychiatrist and my other doctors mentioned to me and considered when choosing an appropriate dosage.
They have spent a lot of money to research the fact that people are less productive when hungover. I guess even known things are targets for scarce research dollars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is standard, it shouldn't be. Mammals sense CO2 buildup, not oxygen depletion. By smothering with CO2, the mice spend their last moments desperate to breathe and unable to. If they were to use nitrogen instead, the mice, having no way to know they've been deprived of oxygen, would just pass out and die.
There's a good chance I have that wrong and they use nitrogen. Like I said, I don't work in animal labs, just adjacent to them.