YouTube Clip of the Week: “Undoing Depression”
The good news in this film is that reasearch on depression is being done. The bad news is that they are ticking off a lot of lab mice in order to carry out these experiments.
There’s very few creatures more depressed than a labratory mouse. Even Richard Lewis would seem bubbly compared to a lab mouse. What they go through if similar to what humans go through in that we learn to give up hope and quietly wait for death.
But how do you scientifically know when a mouse is depressed? Apparently, when they stop swimming in a pool of milk with smooth sides they are unable to climb out of. The more depressed the mouse, the sooner they stop swimming.
Scientists have given antidepressants to mice to see how long they’ll keep swimming. The mice did indeed swim longer. Then, they gave the mice behaviorial therapy, giveing out rewards when the mouse heard a certain clicking noise. Mice with both antidepressants and behavorial training swum even longer than the mice that were just on antidepressants.
Also, when the mouse brains were examined (the video never quite explains how this is done) they showed that new brain cells and neuiral pathways grew in those mice that had both antidepressants and behaviorial therapy.
Which I guess means that those of us who suffer from depression still nedd to keep taking the meds, but also need to go get a bathing suit because we’ll all soon be swimming in milk until we give up. I’m not sure if any researcher will be around to pull us out by our tails, though.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am
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