Spark

by John J. Ratey

Our understanding hasn’t junked the old theory, just expanded it. Now we see depression as a physical alteration of the brain’s emotional circuitry. Norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin are essential messengers that ferry information across the synapses, but without enough good connections in place, these neurotransmitters can only do so much. As far as the brain is concerned, it’s job is to transfer information and constantly rewire itself to help us adapt and survive. In depression, it seems that in certain areas, the brain’s ability to adapt grinds to a halt. The shutdown in depression is a shutdown of learning at the cellular level. Not only is the brain locked into a negative loop of self-hate, but it also loses the flexibility to work its way out of the hole. Redefining depression as a connectivity issue helps explain the wide range of symptoms people experience. It’s not just a matter of feeling empty, helpless, and hopeless. It affects learning, attention, energy, and motivation—disparate systems that involve different parts of the thinking brain. Depression also affects the body, shutting down the drive to sleep, eat, have sex, and generally look after ourselves on a primitive level. Psychiatrist Alexander Niculescu sees depression as a survival instinct to conserve resources in an environment void of hope—“to keep still and stay out of harm’s way,” he wrote in a 2005 article in Genome Biology. It’s a form of hibernation: When the emotional landscape turns wint...