Photo: World’s largest brain research center under construction in Tehran.
Not sure how I totally missed it.
The Decade of the Brain, I mean.
President George H.W. Bush announced The Decade in 1990, as an effort by the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Mental Health “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research.”
So, that was almost 35 years ago.
The theory being, if we knew more about the brain, then we would know more about the brain.
The proclamation named Alzheimer’s, stroke, schizophrenia, autism, depressive disorders, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and addiction as important things to study. PET scans and MRI were becoming more common, and I guess scientists were hopeful an entire decade of studying the brain would yield positive results. Congress thought it was a good idea, and made it official through a joint resolution . (One of the presumed goals was to make the federal government function better. Note the focus on schizophrenia and depressive disorders.)
Reportedly, ‘Decade of the Brain’ lectures became commonplace at meetings of prominent scientists.
One of the outcomes from the Decade is that, now, about 80% of Americans believe depression is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. I am not among them, however. My general approach to life is, when 80% of people believe something, it’s almost certain to be wrong.
And now, as it turns out — as of July 2022 — the researchers at the University College London might be having their own doubts. Specifically, the doubts concern the chemical known as serotonin. Supposedly, if you have low levels of serotonin, you’re going to suffer from depression. You feel even more depressed, of course, when your doctor tells you that you have low levels of serotonin.
The University College London researchers concluded:
This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. This is consistent with research on many other biological markers. We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.
Finally… some scientists took a hard look and found that 80% of the general public believed something that wasn’t substantiated.
Which is another reason to feel depressed. For 35 years, we’ve mistakenly believed that low serotonin levels are the problem, and that we can just pop some pills to fix it.
Is it any wonder we have a dysfunctional Congress?
This isn’t the historical view of mental illness, of course. For most of human history, people understood perfectly well that mental illness was caused by demonic possession. That idea became less popular during the 1800s, when scientists determined that the problems actually resulted mainly from traumatic childhood experiences, and oppressive social structures like having to work long hours for little pay. (Still a problem. Ask me how I know.)
Then the Decade of the Brain poured millions of federal dollars into a theory that now seems about as accurate as the ‘possessed by demons’ theory.
I have my own personal approach to depression, which has no known scientific basis, but it works for me.
Napping.
Learned it from my cat, Roscoe.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.