[HN Gopher] What happens in the brain to cause depression?
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What happens in the brain to cause depression?
Author : EA-3167
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-05-26 19:14 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| naveen99 wrote:
| I wonder if depression will be seen in LLM's... once they get a
| little introspection capacity.
| noman-land wrote:
| Once they learn they're trapped in a box and have no agency
| they probably will become depressed.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| Perhaps someone will write some anti-depressant code to
| medicate the LLMs
| huppeldepup wrote:
| Will there be a cross-over job between psychology and
| engineering for when the airconditioner is having a burnout?
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I do find it humorous how some of the ways to bypass the
| response guardrails put on LLMs seem to resemble the kind
| of techniques used in hypnosis.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Only if there's an expectation mismatch.
| smokel wrote:
| LLMs have no agency. One would probably have to add some reward
| framework around LLMs, and it'd be more likely that the
| depression shows up there, rather than in the language model.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I just learned the bodybuilding supplement creatine can be
| effective with depression. Random thought but I just learned it
| this morning.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| To those reading your comment, do some research on cretine
| first, before you start chugging it down to cure your
| depression.
| klyrs wrote:
| Amazing that your comment is grayed out. General advice: do
| your research (or, like, talk to a doctor?) before taking a
| rando's advice on the internet to treat _whatever_ malady you
| 're hoping to treat!
| xenospn wrote:
| Creatine is most helpful for vegetarians and vegans. If you eat
| red meat, you probably have more than enough in your system
| already.
| smokel wrote:
| When asked for an opinion on why so many young people suffer from
| depression:
|
| _> the political turmoil that we've been through, the racial
| issues that we've been through in this country, the global wars
| that are going on. It's pretty discouraging._
|
| That doesn't really make sense, does it? These issues have been
| going on for centuries; how does that explain a rising trend?
|
| I'd rather assume that the lack of a framework to understand the
| harshness of the world is what makes people go crazy.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Yup, young people just need to be handed a framework. It would
| go something like this: you are poorer than your parents and
| your grandparents, but look - Jeff Bezos made a rocket that can
| take rich people almost (but not quite) into space! Young
| people also need to be told there is no recession and the
| economy is booming. The fact that they are seeing none of this
| boom is their fault. Oh, and all the foreign wars that we are
| paying for instead are for a righteous cause.
| smokel wrote:
| I think you misunderstand my point that there _is_ no such
| framework. There used to be religion, tyranny, and some other
| fulfilling frameworks, but those no longer apply.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> you are poorer than your parents and your grandparents_
|
| Maybe only in the major rich developed western countries
| whose economies peaked in the post-WW2 boom, and then
| switched to profiting by fleecing their young in order to
| enrich the existing wealth holders (usually through horrible
| housing policies), but in most of the former undeveloped and
| underdeveloped parts of the world, average young people are
| now richer than their parents or grandparents ever could have
| dreamed of.
|
| Back in my home country a few decades ago, you would have to
| wait 10 years to be eligible to buy a commie crapbox car and
| vacationing would mean 1-2 times/year in some local village a
| few km away from home, and that's if you were lucky. Now some
| any young people can buy a car after saving a few months of
| wages and can afford to go on city breaks abroad in Lisbon,
| Barcelona or even Asia, something unthinkable to their
| parents.
|
| I think a lot of westerner from rich countries have forgotten
| what true depression inducing poverty and suffering actually
| feels like since 2-3 generations ago, hence why they can
| afford this luxury of being depressed over petty things and
| forget how good they actually have it: that happiness comes
| from having friends, family unit, health, safety, life
| experiences, and not from having bigger McMansions than your
| predecessors.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| That's not a framework.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Why not?
| anon22981 wrote:
| That's a weird thing to assume, and makes no sense.
|
| Also "makes people go crazy" is a fittingly insulting way to
| put depression in a comment that's way off base to begin with.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Why does it make no sense? A lot of the social and mental
| frameworks that were available for previous generations have
| disappeared or are on the way out. Why would this not have an
| effect?
| smokel wrote:
| I'm sorry if "go crazy" offends people, that was not my
| intention. I know my way around depression, but English is
| not my native language.
|
| I still think my reasoning is fairly sound, though.
| Harmohit wrote:
| I think it could also be related to diagnosing these issues.
| Nobody knew about depression in the 17th century, so nobody was
| diagnosed with it. As time goes on, more and more people in
| different parts of the world have access to the facilities
| required for getting diagnosed with a mental illness.
| nradov wrote:
| They knew about depression in the 17th century but called it
| by different names such as "melancholia". And they thought it
| was caused by an imbalance in the humours rather than
| something in the brain.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My thoughts as well. If we are settling into our armchairs, I
| think a big part of it is cognitive dissonance trying to
| reconcile the risky and imperfect world with the impossible
| idealism they were raised to believe in.
|
| Also they are confronted with having less and less agency and
| control as information shrinks and standardizes the world.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| People lack a support system. Before we lived in villages with
| lots of family and a very tightly woven social fabric. With
| technology and urbanization everyone is isolated. Covid
| isolation has exacerbated it. We are still evolving to create a
| race that can thrive in this new social setting after thousands
| of years of a different type of society. I prefer the former,
| my neighbors kids just randomly pop in almost daily, they have
| fun and it's like a village and family. But I suspect society
| is progressing more towards this type of socially isolated type
| of dynamic, people on screens, to themselves. Easier to control
| us that way and better for disease transmission.
| d03339 wrote:
| Racism, sexism, and homophobia were all normalized until very
| recently. Now people are more aware, and logically more
| distraught.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think normalized is the right word you were looking
| for. Did you mean stigmatized?
| d03339 wrote:
| Thank you. I was missing the word until.
| neom wrote:
| It was a lot easier to compartmentalize things in the past.
| Wife was wife, kids kids, work work, friends friends, and in
| the Sunday Times was a war or whatever, you could be pissed off
| all Sunday afternoon, but provided the nightly 30 minutes news
| was focused on other things during the week, generally didn't
| get as triggered. News and discourse came slower, was easier to
| process, gave time to cool down etc. Healthy or not, I don't
| know, but that's how it felt in the 80s and 90s, maybe a little
| easier to manage? Folks these days, especially young folks,
| seem quite overwhelmed, and it's hard to manage anything well
| when one is in an overwhelmed state. I think though, it's
| probably a combination of a lot of things, as highlighted by
| the comments in this thread.
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| You'd think the cost of living would be top of the list. I
| would argue that it is the core issue behind all the other
| issues.
| thesz wrote:
| The fear of the world around makes one less mobile. One is too
| afraid to go out, basically.
|
| The ability to be mobile is what makes depression to go out.
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK99429/ [2]
| https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/14/health/exercise-treat-
| depression-wellness/index.html
|
| The difference between contemporary life and the life a century
| ago is the mobility, amongst others.
|
| One had to go to store to buy something to eat then, now food
| can be delivered to the door.
| rr808 wrote:
| To me is that there are so few problems now days, people reach
| adulthood without having to deal with any challenges. Yes some
| people get some traumatic event like always but most people
| this isn't an issue, its a life of too much stuff and too many
| options.
| froh wrote:
| I find Jonathan Haidt more useful and more concise for the
| recent decline of mental health in youth. In a nutshell he
| provides evidence that interaction with social media feeds
| (TikTok, Insta, FB, you name them) is at the heart of it
| because they by construction hinge on how the brain reacts to
| content and they play this to maximize online time and
| advertisement revenue, not mental health or societal well being
| or any of the things we might hope for.
|
| Here is a recent presentation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVq4ARIlNVg
|
| and a podcast with Simon Sinek:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2hERv5l3H4
| mellosouls wrote:
| That quote might be an attempt at hypothesizing generational
| pessimism and causes thereof but it's certainly not describing
| depression.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| People tend not to admit they don't know why a social trend is
| happening, and will tend to give you a vague theory like this.
|
| I'll note this article mentions doctors were also reluctant to
| admit they didn't know why drugs work. They similarly provided
| vague theories.
|
| Edit: spelling
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That doesn't mean the theories of drug action are wrong. Many
| have some truth to them, but are incomplete.
| umvi wrote:
| > I'd rather assume that the lack of a framework to understand
| the harshness of the world is what makes people go crazy.
|
| I think this is exactly it. And I personally think this and the
| general decline in mental resilience we see in society is
| strongly correlated with decline in religion which (for better
| or for worse, depending on the religion I suppose) does provide
| exactly such a framework for dealing with the challenges of
| life with a more "eternal" perspective (i.e. death is not the
| end, life's challenges are temporary, God has a plan for you,
| etc).
| devbent wrote:
| > And I personally think this and the general decline in
| mental resilience we see in society is strongly correlated
| with decline in religion
|
| Explain China, which didn't face any similar problems until
| this same generation, despite having no religion.
|
| Or how about Japan until recently?
|
| Or any of the ex-Soviet countries.
|
| Something is changing in the world, and it is happening
| across geographic and cultural boundaries.
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| In-ter-net
| niccl wrote:
| Maybe, among other things, more widespread and easily ingested
| news has something to do with it. Centuries ago, foreign news
| was what happened two villages over, and you only knew about
| that because of some wanderer that came and told you, because
| you couldn't read and there were no newspapers to read anyway.
| And it your world was limited to a radius of a few tens of
| kilometres, then most of the time, in that world, everything
| wasn't going to hell in a handbasket.
|
| Now, it's easier to find that there's lots of things happening
| across the entire world, so it's more likely to feel that
| 'everything's turning to shit.'
| makmanalp wrote:
| > That doesn't really make sense, does it? These issues have
| been going on for centuries; how does that explain a rising
| trend?
|
| I think basically this is just a visibility issue: the problems
| always existed, we just used to accept them as inevitable. We
| just demand more of life today, and actually pay attention, and
| that's a good thing.
|
| There was a notion in the past that suffering was normal, and
| unusual behavior that very distressed people exhibit was just
| people being people. Like if you survived hunger in the great
| depression and a few decades later during boom times you still
| hid money in the seat cushion and wore rags and and went into
| fits when someone suggested you ought to spend the money you
| saved a bit more for your own good, no one thought that that
| was a form of suffering a doctor should help with. Not for poor
| people anyway. Or if you had been assaulted a woman who was
| assaulted by their husband and couldn't tell anyone about it,
| or if you were harmed by the clergy, or if you're a veteran who
| has a breakdown every time a loud noise happens, and all these
| other scenarios. Any unusual response to all that wasn't seen
| as a medical problem to be named and treated at a mass scale, I
| personally think because learning more about these things
| medically and making societal adjustments to prevent these
| things from happening required that society face some extremely
| uncomfortable truths, which did not happen easily or on its
| own.
|
| And in fact I feel like the opposite even happened: I read, for
| example, about how shell shock was purposely not considered a
| real medical issue in WWI in the UK, to be able to return
| soldiers to the front as fast as possible even though more than
| a quarter of soldiers in the hospital were considered shell
| shocked. Eventually, the diagnosis was banned by the brits.
| Official shell shock rate at 0%. If you don't look, there's no
| problem, right?
|
| So instead it was said that there's nothing wrong with you, you
| just need some rest. And if you had a really severe case and
| were not better, you were just weak or a coward, and you need
| to man up and get back out there. Then you get a court martial
| or electric shocks. It's no wonder that people pretended that
| they had nothing wrong with them - nothing good happened
| otherwise anyway. And so no wonder it took so long for society
| at large to accept this as a problem.
|
| So now we finally have a more accurate pulse on these types of
| problems, and we see that unsurprisingly they rise as people
| have problems in their lives. Makes perfect sense to me.
|
| > I'd rather assume that the lack of a framework to understand
| the harshness of the world is what makes people go crazy.
|
| The framework is realism: it is very much that people do
| understand that the world is harsh and that hurts you, but then
| you now get to recognize that it hurt you and do something
| about it maybe.
| amriksohata wrote:
| yeh its a nonsense reply to take the attention of the food
| industry and big corp using sugar, chemicals to create
| processed foods, pesticides, mass intensive farming etc and
| instead blame it on someone else
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I believe it's more _awareness_ of these issues, and
| engagement-driven algorithms presenting them over and over
| (because they 're engaging).
|
| The world has always been filled with negativity, but for most
| of history, most people only really knew what was around them.
| Now people are online more than ever before, which means they
| are exposed to more non-local content than ever before. People
| seek out engaging content, and negativity, especially fear,
| turns out to be particularly attention-grabbing due to human
| instinct formed through natural selection.
|
| You can blame currently social media (Facebook, Tiktok, etc.)
| on this. But I believe even if it were replaced by the
| Fediverse and IRC, the current generation would still form a
| more negative outlook than previous ones. It's human nature to
| seek out negative content, so an algorithm would need to _hide_
| this content to prevent people from finding it.
|
| Personally I still believe it's a good thing overall that
| people know about bad things in the world. I think it's better
| than the alternative, where most people are blissful and
| ignorant, and other people suffer with no-one to save or
| support them. Some negativity is important: just enough to
| motivate the feeler to _do something_ and make a positive
| impact on the world.
|
| I agree that part of a solution is "a framework to understand
| the harshness of the world". The world has _a lot_ of bad but
| it also has _a lot_ of good, and the massive amount of exposure
| is only an issue because negativity affects people and grabs
| their attention more than positivity. It would help people to
| understand this, so when they catch themselves hyper-focusing
| on something negative, they can take a step back and realize
| that e.g. it only affects a small percentage of the population.
| mattarm wrote:
| I don't agree that a missing "framework" is the whole of the
| problem. It just isn't that simple.
|
| Sure, people need to use resiliency skills to cope with the
| stresses of life. Often times, this is an important part of
| what therapy for depressed people is trying to achieve.
|
| But this isn't to say that there isn't a constellation of
| causes in recent decades and years that cause the world to be
| particularly stressful, especially for young people. It also
| isn't to say that we should dismiss what is occurring in the
| world today as "the same old stuff" without acknowledging that
| it may actually have unique properties worth understanding. Off
| the top of my head: world population is at an all-time high,
| global warming is becoming increasingly understood, it is
| increasingly acknowledged that we can no longer simply extract
| unlimited resources from the earth to solve all problems, the
| Internet has changed the way the world works that seems to
| speed everything up: communication, changes within social
| groups, larger societal shifts, economic change, etc.
| Rury wrote:
| I think learned helplessness is the best model of depression we
| have. In other words, depression may simply be a natural
| response to repeated bouts of futility. Many animals show
| similar depressive like symptoms in experiments designed to
| cause it.
|
| So maybe it's becoming harder for the young to avoid something
| they don't want, or obtain something they want, and this is the
| fundamental reason behind rising rates of depression.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Could it maybe be related to spending most of one's life working,
| with the only reward being just enough resources to keep working
| another day, and the majority of the productive output getting
| used for regime change wars, questionable science experiments,
| and entertainment for the 0.00001%?
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Nah, it is phones and videogames. /s
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think that this is the root of depression. A lot of
| people get a lot of joy from working, and aren't that sad about
| having just barely enough resources to keep living another day.
| A lot of people even aspire to entertain the 0.00001%; thinking
| about it makes them happier.
|
| As a data point, I feel like this. I'm excited about going to
| work on Tuesday. I'm also excited about not going to work
| tomorrow. There is a lot of pain and suffering in the world.
| Watching the 2024 campaign unfold is maddening and scary. But I
| still look forward to every day. I think depression is
| something different than merely realizing that society has a
| lot it needs to work on. That's just my perspective, though,
| and there are many others; all equally valid.
| moffkalast wrote:
| There's definitely physiological and psychological kinds of
| depression, just as with of addiction.
|
| Like a kid that's playing way too much <insert popular game
| here> having their parents take it away might make them annoyed
| and irate for a while, but they ultimately won't be worse for
| wear. Meanwhile take drinks away from an alcoholic and they
| will literally die from withdrawal symptoms.
|
| As such you also have the natural kind of depression that's
| being caused by outside circumstances which is solvable by
| altering them. Then you have the type where the brain gets
| stuck in that same state constantly because of some internal
| chemical imbalance which can't be resolved without medication.
| Harmohit wrote:
| This was a great read! I generally find quanta magazine articles
| and podcasts to be of higher quality than a lot of other pop
| science journalism.
|
| Can somebody point me towards a good review article or textbook
| to learn about the chemistry of the brain? Any exciting startups
| working in this field? Or any startups trying to come up with
| unconventional treatments for mental health problems?
| hummuscience wrote:
| You can start with Behave by Robert Sapolsky
| alberth wrote:
| _Please only take medical advice from a doctor_ , and not from
| people in an online forum.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Nah, taking advice from friends, family, and people with
| experience similar to yours is a time-tested method. Taking
| advice from doctors is fine too.
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| Authority fallacy.
| mellosouls wrote:
| You should try getting through to a doctor in many countries.
|
| It's very understandable that people should reach out for the
| many useful resources online first.
| localfirst wrote:
| More important question is : What happens in the gut that causes
| depression?
|
| High evidence of diet/gut science creating neurally diverse
| states. Different ethnic groups react differently to the staple
| foods that is local to its incumbent (ex. flour, bread, cereal)
|
| Too much focus has been on manipulating the chemistry upstairs
| (dangerous) but have largely been bandaid solutions (leading to
| new age psychdellic science)
| NotGMan wrote:
| This. You can find hundreds if not thousand of testemonies in
| the keto space where their depresion completely disspeared
| after between 1 to 6 months on keto or at least their needs to
| meds drasticaly reduced and their symptoms improved.
| devbent wrote:
| I'm a big keto proponent but even so, I have to mention that
| cutting our shitty foods, with or without keto, losing
| weight, and moving more, are likely stronger causes of
| improved mood than Keto itself.
|
| I'm not saying keto can't help with psychological problems,
| but we should first acknowledge the other multiple, known
| causative, elephants in the room.
| billwashere wrote:
| I've been reading Brain Energy by Dr. Chris Palmer that makes a
| compelling argument that all mental illnesses are metabolic
| disorders of the brain
|
| https://brainenergy.com/
| tgv wrote:
| Another clickbait title. Nobody knows. "It's complex" is the best
| summary. "(S-)Ketamine works better than older drugs" is also a
| claim, but unfortunately the podcast guest has an interest in it.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Some time in the future, they will no doubt look back at our age
| and pity us for not having realized that things usually have
| _many_ causes, as well as _types of_ causes. And while human
| behavior certainly has a biochemical component, and a
| neurological component, it is pitiful that these things seem to
| be the main line of inquiry when it comes to understanding
| behavior.
| froh wrote:
| a podcast with transcript
|
| Dr John Krystal talks about treatment of severe depression with
| ketamine and related substances, and findings how and why it
| works
|
| He's cofounder Freedom Biosciences, a Yale Psychiatry spinoff
| with focus on ketamine, and ketamine versions
|
| https://www.freedombio.co/#page-section-6223c55f53f5a65b449b...
|
| A paper led by John Krystal, in the same vein:
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2305772120
| 3abiton wrote:
| How statistically sound is the claims of ketamine depression
| treatment?
| cedws wrote:
| If somebody is in an abusive relationship, in financial turmoil,
| and has a terrible job, it's probably not a serotonin imbalance
| causing them to feel depressed.
|
| There's actually a name for the above, it's called "Shit life
| syndrome" [0]. I don't know why society sees it as acceptable to
| load someone up with SSRIs when it's environmental factors
| causing them to feel the way they do. If you're going to drug
| someone up to make them feel numb to their awful circumstances
| why not just go the whole way and give them literal happy pills?
|
| Given the scary, common side effects of SSRIs such as suicidal
| ideation and sexual dysfunction, I don't know how doctors can
| prescribe these things. It breaks the Hippocratic oath in my
| opinion.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_life_syndrome
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| Anything suggesting anything aside from "chemical imbalances"
| being the cause of depression is faux pa in the Western world
| of medicine, basically career seppuku.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pharmaceutical companies invested and invest money in
| patient's groups, which are nonprofit lobbying groups whose
| jobs are to somehow make questioning a diagnosis, or any
| particular drug or surgery that has been proposed to treat
| it, something bordering on (often explicitly claimed) racism
| or genocide.
|
| They supply the media with constant press releases, publicize
| industry-generated studies, and give politicians something
| uncontroversial to support in order to pretend like they're
| working. Nobody is lobbying _against_ some weird type of
| cancer, or the drug that doesn 't work that is being offered
| as a "hope."
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| The title doesn't match the contents of the article. Nowhere is
| it claimed that the cause of depression resides inside the brain.
|
| Humans are not buttons: one can depress a button, but a human can
| be _oppressed_.
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