Re: Evolution of Depression

On 31 Mag, 19:42, Vernon Balbert <vbalb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/31/2008 12:46 AM, Vend went clickity clack on the keyboard and
produced this interesting bit of text:



On 30 Mag, 18:51, Vernon Balbert <vbalb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/30/2008 9:25 AM, r norman went clickity clack on the keyboard and
produced this interesting bit of text:

On Fri, 30 May 2008 09:20:46 -0700, Vernon Balbert
<vbalb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/30/2008 7:08 AM, r norman went clickity clack on the keyboard and
produced this interesting bit of text:
On Fri, 30 May 2008 07:00:12 -0700 (PDT), Vend <ven...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 30 Mag, 13:23, Robert Grumbine <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <FEG%j.2779$N87.1...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Vernon Balbert wrote:
Why do we suffer from depression? What evolutionary advantages are
there to it? It seems something that's not very advantageous, at least
in present times.
Jumping in later, but differently.
One thing to observe is that depression is not unique to humans.
At the very least, rats and dogs display it. (Useful since you can
do more experiments on rats than people.) See, for instance,
_Half Empty or Half Full: The Psychology of Optimism_ (title
approximate). An important (to my reading) experiment was one
in which dogs were shocked. If they were shocked for being on
one side of the test room, they rapidly learned to stay on the other
side. If they were shocked regardless of where they were, they
eventually gave up and lay down anywhere.
Would you claim that these dogs were depressed?
If it's adaptive, it's an adaptation that goes pretty far
back. If it's not adaptive, it's an awfully common non-adaptation
in mammals.
Like most diseases.
You can also see it in cockatoos (I might be misremembering
the group -- very long lived, social, intelligent birds with a vocabulary).
A conjecture my wife and I have about depression is that it
helps you behave 'properly' if you're in a hierarchal social
group (egads, a testable hypothesis, what were we thinking!).
This was prompted by looking at her dogs. The smaller one just
doesn't realize that he's supposed to submit to the larger, and
the larger won't to the smaller. So there are daily dominance
arguments between the two. In the wild, the time and energy they
expend on repeating the arguments would be extremely anti-survival.
The 'proper' behavior of submission is, in human terms, depression.
I don't see how depression can be a proper social behavior in humans.
In fact, depressed humans tend to be as asocial as they can.
Also suggestive (weakly, at least on its own) of a genetic link
is that depression runs in families. Since home environment also
runs in families, this isn't a strong observation itself. I don't
know if there's been a proper study to disentangle the two.
But I'll stand with the conjecture that depression is an adaptive
trait developed for (in) social animals to function in their
large groups. A kludgy adaptation, as are many in evolution.
And western society's mythology is greatly at odds with the target
(the myth of everyone being the alpha)
What myth?
Actually the westerns have developed the omniscent, omnipotent, super-
alpha god to keep people in check.
of depression (enabling
people to function as betas to avoid the constant social and
physical stresses of everyone trying to be alphas).
There may be evolutionary-type "just-so" stories with absolutely no
hard evidence to explain sadness and feeling down-in-the-dumps when
things go terribly wrong. But clinical depression is a very different
matter.
And it's clinical depression which concerns me most in a very personal way.
There is help you can seek. It is not necessarily just popping a
pill, although that often is useful. But it does requires expertise
to diagnose and treat.
And I'm getting that help. However, for the most part, we're still in
the dark ages regarding depression and other mental diseases. It's a
hit or miss proposition right now, due mostly to the complexity of the
human brain. (I remember reading a quote that said something like, "If
the brain were so simple we could understand it, we'd be so simple that
we couldn't.") Basically we're dealing with psychotherapy that involves
trying to get people to do things when they find it hard to even get out
of bed in the morning, as well as trying to alter brain chemistry when
we don't even understand how brain chemistry works except in the most
rudimentary ways.

In fact, nobody knows how antidepressant work, drug companies say that
they restore a proper neurotransmitter balance, but actually they have
no clue.

Actually, they do know how they work at the base level; i.e. SSRIs
prevent the reuptake inhibitors that affect serotonin.

They prevent serotonin reuptake, making serotonin accumulate in the
synaptic clefts.

Specifically, if
serotonin (as well as dopamine and other neurotransmitters) is not
negated at some point, the signal transmitted by the nerve keeps getting
sent across the synapse to the next nerve in the circuit. Basically it
keeps the on switch turned on longer than it ordinarily would.

Actually I think they generate spurious signals and/or increase the
intensity of signals on the synapses that frequently carry serotonine
signals.

(If you
want to see what happens when you really flood the system with
serotonin, check out the effects that Ecstasy has on people.)

What is not known is why serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and other
neurotransmitters cause a change in mood. Personally, I'm on bupropion
(Wellbutrin) which is a reuptake inhibitor for norepinephrine and
dopamine. It doesn't have the sexual side effects that Paxil and other
SSRIs have. Why this is so, nobody knows. (Nobody knows why SSRIs
inhibit orgasms.)

I heard that there is also a controversy about whether these drugs
actually work, althought I don't know if this controversy has any
scientific merit.

They do work, but how well they work is highly subject to the individual
taking them. I'm at the maximum recommended dose of bupropion and it
seems to be working, although I seem to be a tad more irritable than
when I'm not on them. This was not an effect of SSRIs. However,
knowing that that it's caused by the medication helps me to deal with it.

(For example, SSRIs have a wonderful side effect of
not allowing one to have orgasms. Why this happens, nobody knows.)

Isn't orgasm mostly a reflex?

Not that I'm aware of. A reflex is basically an automatic trigger of a
muscle that occurs without involving the brain to make a decision. It's
a great adaptation which increases response time when you touch
something hot.

I wonder what else these drugs inhibit.

The list of side effects for these things is long and and varied,
including that they may cause depression in some individuals, the very
thing they're supposed to help with. (It's the same reason why people
who use Ecstasy are so depressed when they come down from the high.)

Psychology is still very much hit or miss and this is why I'm
distrustful of it. But it's the only game in town, so I'm trying to go
by it.

--
Rule of Acquisition number 17: A contract is a contract is a contract...
but only between Ferengi.

.

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