Depression is often accompanied by bad habits such as impulsiveness, poor coping skills, addiction, and procrastination. That can also include feeling fatigued and unmotivated. These bad habits are primarily caused by disrupted activity in the striatum, which is an ancient subcortical region deep below the surface that we inherited from the dinosaurs. The striatum has two main parts that are particularly important in depression: the upper part, known simply as the dorsal striatum, and the lower part, called the nucleus accumbens. Both parts rely heavily on the neurotransmitter dopamine to
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