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Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

eneuro.org

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Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#61

Post by melagonster »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #38
bubblyworld wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the "modern" point of view is that selection acting at the level of the gene (not the organism or group) is sufficient as a theory. The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype go into this stuff in a lot of detail. Totally agree with your first sentence though. And even if there is a plausible adaptive function it may have only been adaptive in the past, or might be a side effect of some other ada…

Why not the group?

Group selection only works under some rare situations. Groups should rapidly build and disintegrate to make group selection work.

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#62

Post by Wurdan »

jancsika wrote: post #54
Wurdan wrote: post #3

"These findings suggest that in young adults, depressive symptoms are associated with difficulty in overriding prepotent responses to actively avoid aversive outcomes in the absence of reward." My word... Could they have phrased that any less clearly? As I understand it: the more depressive symptoms the subjects showed, the less likely they were to actively avoid bad outcomes (unless there was some other associated r…

Your summary claims more than the original you quoted, no? Example: Case 1: Subject tries piano sight-reading exercises, if they get less than 80% accuracy a loud annoying horn will blare . Then subject goes again and try to improve the score. Care 2. Subject tries piano sight-reading exercises, and if they get less than 80% accuracy they get notified that they didn't succeed at the test. Then they go again and try t…

I don't really know what the original is claiming, thanks to how it was written. I only offered a guess at what the authors were saying.

So, you're saying that the study was narrower in scope and that the results are only applicable to specific bad/negative outcomes?

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#63

Post by 47282847 »

munificent wrote: post #13
OgsyedIE wrote: post #2

This is exactly what you'd expect if the hypothesis that depression is an evolved adaptation for surviving no-win scenarios that can only be waited out holds. In a scenario where a disaster has negatively affected the primary productivity of the local food web (e.g. volcano, forest fire, bolide, plague or tsunami), the groups of social species that exist in an environment are likely to engage in internal strife until…

I do like evolutionary explanations for a lot of human behavior, but this one feels a little too pat to me. Patience, "biding our time", "hunkering down", etc. are actual emotional states we can experience and recognize, and depression doesn't feel even remotely like for most people as far as I'm aware. Also, this explanation would only really work if the entire group entered a dormant depressed state together. Other…

> On the contrary, when someone is depressed, the immediate response by people around them is generally try to "cheer them up" or encourage them to exit that depressed state.

An explanation for that behavior is that this kind of reaction serves as protection against the contagion. It doesn’t help the depressed but the environment around them, to not join in and feel the feelings of despair and hopelessness.

According to some theories, depression means other feelings like anger and anxiety are being suppressed - resulting in transference and counter-transference.

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#64

Post by thisislife2 »

roblh wrote: post #55
pton_xd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, sadness is not how I would describe depression. It's more like... a deep sense of apathy, emptiness and hopelessness with no apparent cause or end in sight. Of course that mental state would hinder learning, you're missing all the brain signals and reward feedback to care about anything.

I think everyone is wired a little differently. I agree that sadness isn’t the right word for it either, apathy and empathy and hopelessness are bang on. But for me, I guess I take refuge in learning. I find it hard to go and do anything physical or social, and the only outlet left is to learn obsessively cause otherwise I’ll lose my mind. Maybe trying to stockpile knowledge for the day when the hopelessness goes awa…

> I find it hard to go and do anything physical or social, and the only outlet left is to learn obsessively cause otherwise I’ll lose my mind.

That's depression's "twin" sister (with a different personality) anxiety taking command of your behaviour. It's well-established now that obsessive-compulsive and avoidance behaviours are linked to anxiety. Both depression and anxiety feed each other.

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#65

Post by munificent »

47282847 wrote: post #63
munificent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do like evolutionary explanations for a lot of human behavior, but this one feels a little too pat to me. Patience, "biding our time", "hunkering down", etc. are actual emotional states we can experience and recognize, and depression doesn't feel even remotely like for most people as far as I'm aware. Also, this explanation would only really work if the entire group entered a dormant depressed state together. Other…

> On the contrary, when someone is depressed, the immediate response by people around them is generally try to "cheer them up" or encourage them to exit that depressed state. An explanation for that behavior is that this kind of reaction serves as protection against the contagion. It doesn’t help the depressed but the environment around them, to not join in and feel the feelings of despair and hopelessness. According…

> depression means other feelings like anger and anxiety are being suppressed

Yes, my not-well-formed pet theory around depression is that in most cases it's a sort of second-order effect of another emotional state like anxiety. Sort of a stalemate when at war with one's self.

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#66

Post by floatrock »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
floatrock wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, a sentence only someone on tenure-track could love. ChatGPT, asked to translate to a high schooler: "Basically, this study found that young people with depression sometimes struggle to break automatic habits, especially when they’re trying to avoid something bad and there isn’t a prize or reward for doing it."

> ChatGPT, asked to translate to a high schooler: "Basically, this study found that young people with depression sometimes struggle to break automatic habits, especially when they’re trying to avoid something bad and there isn’t a prize or reward for doing it." The translation is just as much of a word salad as the original, just with simpler vocabulary. Worse, it mangles the key point. Prepotent responses aren't "au…

And engineers don't really deal with frictionless spherical cows, but high schoolers might. All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Re: Depression reduces capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events

#67

Post by JumpCrisscross »

floatrock wrote: post #66
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT, asked to translate to a high schooler: "Basically, this study found that young people with depression sometimes struggle to break automatic habits, especially when they’re trying to avoid something bad and there isn’t a prize or reward for doing it." The translation is just as much of a word salad as the original, just with simpler vocabulary. Worse, it mangles the key point. Prepotent responses aren't "au…

And engineers don't really deal with frictionless spherical cows, but high schoolers might. All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Non sequitur. This LLM’s summary is wrong and useless. It would be like talking about frictionless spheres and then applying the wrong equations.
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