Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nightmare. That, depressed people say, is a hint of how they feel in every waking moment. It's horrible - so horrible that most sufferers need little convincing that what they're experiencing is more than just sadness but the effects of a disease that has taken root in their brain. When they prescribe antidepressants, most doctors are working from the idea that depression has somatic underpinnings: that it arises from an imbalance of certain neurotransmitters in the synapses - or spaces - between nerve cells in the brain. While science has implicated dopamine and noradrenaline in depression, and some of the newest...
...depression is a disease, it seems logical that the most effective way to treat it is with biological agents. Secreted into the synapses, serotonin is normally partially reabsorbed by the brain cells that released it. SSRIs block this reabsorption, allowing more serotonin to accumulate in the synapses. The result, hopefully, is that the patient begins to feel better within a few weeks. But how solid is the chemical-imbalance model of depression? That depends on whom you ask. The drug companies present it as fact. On its website, Pfizer, maker of the blockbuster SSRI sertraline (Zoloft), asserts that antidepressants "work...
...chemical abnormality trigger the bad feelings we call depression, or might years of unresolved anxiety and festering discontent cause chemical disturbances - disturbances that might fix themselves once sufferers put their lives in order? By slowly unraveling the extraordinary complexity of neurotransmitter interaction, scientists are learning more about how the brain works. But they still wouldn't claim to know the half of it. Pinning depression on a chemical imbalance is problematic when what constitutes normal brain chemistry has yet to be defined. "I think what we have to tell trainee psychiatrists is that this is a far more complex area...
...Others struggle to see any role for the SSRIs. As they see it, if depressed people's brain chemistry isn't messed up before they start taking the drugs, it's stone-cold certain that it will be once they're on them. There's no evidence that any drug acts specifically to reverse depression, says Moncrieff. "It's more accurate to understand psychiatric drugs as inducing abnormal states, analogous to how we use recreational drugs to induce euphoria or social disinhibition." The most she can say for the SSRIs is that some of them are mildly sedating, "and this...
...sanlab.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp Enter ... Mecha-Grandma! Japanese researchers have developed a robotic exoskeleton to help the elderly and disabled walk and even lift heavy objects like the jug of water above. It's called the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL. (The inventor has obviously never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Its brain is a computer (housed in a backpack) that learns to mimic the wearer's gait and posture; bioelectric sensors pick up signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles, so it can anticipate movements the moment the wearer thinks of them. A commercial version is in the works. Just...