Majikthise

Is depression killing your brain?

Morgan of 3QD points to a fascinating story about new discoveries that are prompting neuroscientists to rethink what depression is, and how anti-depressants actually work.

We're often told that depression is caused by neurochemical imbalances. The assumption is that Prozac and other antidepressants improve the symptoms of depression by boosting the effects of serotonin (or other key neurotransmitters, depending on the drug). Yet, if that's true, why do anti-depressants take weeks to work, despite altering neurotransmitter levels in mere hours?

More recent research suggests that depression is actually a reversible neurodegenerative disease and that antidepressants actually help the brain to heal and thrive again:

In fact, many scientists are now paying increased attention to the frequently neglected symptoms of people suffering from depression, which include problems with learning and memory and sensory deficits for smell and taste. Other researchers are studying the ways in which depression interferes with basic bodily processes, such as sleeping, sex drive, and weight control. Like the paralyzing sadness, which remains the most obvious manifestation of the mental illness, these symptoms are also byproducts of a brain that's literally withering away.

"Depression is caused by problems with the most fundamental thing the brain does, which is process information," says Eero Castren, a neuroscientist at the University of Helsinki. "It's much more than just an inability to experience pleasure."

This new scientific understanding of depression also offers a new way to think about the role of drugs in recovery. While antidepressants help brain cells recover their vigor and form new connections, Castren says that patients must still work to cement these connections in place, perhaps with therapy. He compares antidepressants with anabolic steroids, which increase muscle mass only when subjects also go to the gym.

"If you just sit on your couch, then steroids aren't going to be very effective," he says. "Antidepressants are the same way: if you want the drug to work for you, then you have to work for the drug." [Boston Globe]

I know several people who decline antidepressants because they consider the drugs to be a mere "Band-Aid solution." If this healing hypothesis of antidepressant action is correct, maybe antidepressants aren't just Band-Aids after all.

Video: Daniel Ellsberg on warrantless domestic spying

Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistle blower who leaked the Pentagon Papers, discusses the warrantless spying crisis:

What Every American Needs to Know (and Do) About FISA Before Tuesday, July 8th from Tim Ferriss on Vimeo.

Check out firedoglake's full-page ad in the Washington Post protesting the FISA bill.

Woman arrested at McCain event for "McCain=Bush" sign

A 61-year-old librarian was ejected from an ostensibly public McCain campaign event at the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, CO on June 7 because she was brandishing a deadly memetic weapon: a hand-lettered sign that read "McCain=Bush."

Carol Kreck was standing outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, on city property. Ms. Kreck objected that she was standing on city property. She was lead away by a police office and ticketed for trespassing.

Carol Kreck, QED.

As ThinkProgress notes: "McCain has apparently taken a page from the Bush playbook. In 2005, the White House had three activists expelled from a Denver public forum with President Bush because it was the administration’s policy “to exclude potentially disruptive guests from Bush’s appearances nationwide.”"

Update: A commenter asks how I know Kreck was arrested. About 1:03 into the video, she asks whether she is being arrested. The police officer escorting her answers "yes."

Fireworks and Ice

Fireworks and Ice, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

See the rest of the New York Fireworks 2008 set.

 

Fireworks in the Rain

Fireworks in the Rain, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.


See the rest of the New York Fireworks 2008 set.

 

Sepia Fireworks

Sepia Fireworks, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.


See the rest of the New York Fireworks 2008 set.

 

Fireworks

Fireworks, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Fireworks

New York Fireworks, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

More Independence Day fireworks.

Williamsburg Fireworks

Williamsburg, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Last night's fireworks display, as seen from Williamsburg.

Race-baiting former senator Jesse Helms has died

One of America's most notorious race-baiters has died. Former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms passed away early this morning at the age of eighty-six.

Helms wasn't just another racist politician, racism was his politics. His entire career was an extended pitch to the worst instincts of Americans. He became a conservative icon by skillfully harnessing the media of his day to stoke the country's darkest fears about race, sex, and modernity.

Along the way, Helms played a major role in assembling what we know today as the right wing noise machine--an integrated network of media outlets, think tanks, political consultants, lobbyists, church groups, and direct-mail fundraisers dedicated to rolling back the reforms of the 1960s and "reclaiming" America for straight white guys with money. It's not for nothing that Helms is being lionized as a major figure in the modern conservative movement.

Jesse Helms may even have been world's first vlogger. In 1960 he began producing a TV segment called Viewpoint for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC. In all, more than 2800 2-minute Viewpoints were broadcast.

Helms used the Viewpoint and other syndicated media products to establish his brand of race-baiting demagoguery.

"Dr. King's outfit...is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior," Helms announced in a 1963 edition of Viewpoint. (As a senator, Helms launched a filibuster against the MLK holiday. He also went to court to try to force the FBI to open its files on Martin Luther King, whom Helms denounced as a communist on the Senate floor.)

"Are civil rights only for Negroes? White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who have had their purses snatched by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated," he opined in a 1963 Viewpoint, which was later quoted in The Charlotte Observer.