Slashdot Mirror
Ever-Happy Mouse Sheds Light on Depression
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have bred a strain of mouse that's permanently cheerful, in hopes of better understanding and treating depression in people. By breeding mice lacking the TREK-1 gene, which is involved in serotonin transmission, researchers were able create a depression-resistant strain. They say it's the first time depression has been eliminated through genetic alteration of an organism."
Pinky
Reminds me of the movie Brain Candy.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116768/
Grow an ear on his back, that'll teach 'em!
I'd like the be the first to welcome our cheerful overlords...
If you're incapable of depression, and you're always happy, how do you know if you really are happy?
Deactivate a mouse's TREK-1 and it acts like it's on antidepressants.
Take my Trek away from me and I get depressed.
There toning it down for the kids. By "Happy" they mean the mice are randy.
I wonder how closely depression and negative emotions like outrage, regret, etc are tied together? If I'm unable to be depressed, would I be able to care about what seems to be a series of bad things shaping the world? People I've met on anti-depressants can be pretty non-chalant regarding just about everything, so long as they're on their pills.
If you can see where I'm going with this, you're probably a paranoid conspiracy theorist too.
what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
Whilst this seems like it could be useful if applied to humans, what kind of effect is it going to have at times that it might be appropriate to be depressed (ie. greiving period after a death, etc.)?
Hmm, sounds like we might have some reaver mice on our hands in a few years.
Kill the damn things before they escape, learn to talk, and start asking us if "we are having a case of the Mondays"
NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS
By taking away their cheese.
humans can have very similar experience: just quit work and start smoking pot, eating magic mushrooms and dancing on the streets in the nude.
Is it a good idea to get rid of stress-related (causing) mechansims? A stress free life maybe a very exciting prospect for an individual for about a month or a year, but is this going to be good from point of view of the bigger picture? If humans did not stress about things at all, would they bother doing anything, like bothering to find food, protecting the offspring, basically surviving as a species?
You can't handle the truth.
Not taking away, just strategically moving it daily.
How we know is more important than what we know.
TREK-1 has an important role in neuroprotection against epilepsy and brain and spinal chord ischemia. So there are some very adverse side effects to this.
The article seems very light. There's lots of interesting stuff to be found if you google for "trek-1 gene".
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Hey, maybe the scientists can use this to their advantage. Something like this:
PETA spokesman: You're abusing animals in your lab, you fiend.
Scientist: But they're happy!
PETA spokesman: How can they be happy with you jabbing them with needles every half hour? Among OTHER things.
Scientist: Easy - they're permanently cheerful, no matter what we do to 'em. We engineered 'em that way.
PETA spokesman: >.
One way is the 'forced swim test'. They put the mouse in a water tank from which it can't escape. The animal will normaly swim around trying to find a way out. If it is depressed it will tend to give up on swiming and spend long periods of time without moving. Another way is the 'tail suspension test'. It is prety much the same thing. The mouse is suspended on its tail. If it is depressed it won't give a shit about life and will just hang there. Give it some antidepresenats and it will move and try to escape a lot more actively.
Mice wake up, eat, sh!t and run on their wheel.
Mice DON'T change the world. Mice invent new tools to save back breaking labor.
Mice don't feel taunted by the universe, to figure out it's secrets.
Mice don't get depressed because a loved one is dying of cancer, and work tirelessly seeking, supporting, and funding medical research. (then again I think Mice get the raw end of this particular desire of Man)
I am not a rat in cage.
I am not a tool to be made happy so I can work longer at a job I should hate.
Keep your chemical paradise, I'll take life for all it's worth.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
If they can breed a Goth that's permanently cheerful *then* I'll be impressed.
Let's get Marvin to talk to the mouse and see if it still remains cheerful.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Seeing Rosanne Barr naked in the streets would sober my ass right up, and depress me, all in one shot.
Dog is my co-pilot.
So, like office workers and deadlines?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Anybody saw/remember Serenity (movie of Sci-Fi series Firefly)? Can it happen if we get rid of stress? Spoiler Alert! -------------- In the movie, somehow they took people's aggressiveness, and people simply stopped doing anything (they literally stopped moving), and they died while they are sitting/lying down like dolls. --------------
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course, one could argue with any one model of depression in animals. That is why the article mentions that they tested it in 5 models of animal depression. Even more, they showed increased efficacy of seratonin in their brains (which we know can reduce depression in humans), and in addition showed lower corticosterone levels under duress (a common measure of stress in humans and animals), which is indicative of lack of depression in humans (and a good thing in general).
So, yes, you can argue with any one model, but, precisely because of such arguments, articles (in Nature at least) prepare for them in advance - really, as much as is possible. If someone doesn't agree to results like this, then perhaps he/she just have a problem with the whole model of using animals to test human conditions; but this model has been proven time and again in giving eventual benefit to research on humans.
Of course, this result should be replicated by outside labs before we accept it. But it sounds like good research so far.
Hmm..And on top of that, they are all features normally associated with overlords... .. I, for one, welcome them..
To be exact, they have just numbed her (note: in Russian, different animals have genders, and mouse is 'she'. I will never point to animal as 'it', please excuse me) emotions instead of making here genuinely happy. Not-sad mouse is as far, far away from ever-happy as she could be.
Sorry, yes I know a dirty word around here, but it stops depression dead. Our body is designed to do physical work on a daily basis, if it doesn't get exercise all sorts of things start to go wrong, depression is just one of them, and not a minor one.
Deleted
Your first link is incorrect. Just in case someone want's to find them, here are the singing mice.
Jesus, be a little more enthusiastic, would you?
Can't you see that this brings us closer to the laudable goal of making both goth and emo extinct over the next 200 years?
That's putting it mildly...
Minnie's unconsious, Daisy is limping, and Goofy is hiding in a tree...
What have we done!? We should never have played god!
Scientists finally clued into what you're saying and decided they sure as hell didn't want any variety those "super mice" angry. All new "super mouse" models will now be forced to comply to the new industry standard in happiness.
He sat down.
... er ... I think I'll just have a green salad,' he muttered.
The waiter approached.
'Would you like to see the menu?' he said,
'or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?'
'Huh?' said Ford.
'Huh?' said Arthur.
'Huh?' said Trillian.
'That's cool,' said Zaphod, 'we'll meet the meat.'
- snip -
A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.
'Good evening', it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, 'I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body?'
It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters in to a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.
'Something off the shoulder perhaps?' suggested the animal, 'Braised in a white wine sauce?'
'Er, your shoulder?' said Arthur in a horrified whisper.
'But naturally my shoulder, sir,' mooed the animal contentedly, 'nobody else's is mine to offer.'
Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.
'Or the rump is very good,' murmured the animal. 'I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there.'
It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.
'Or a casselore of me perhaps?' it added.
'You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?' whispered Trillian to Ford.
'Me?' said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, 'I don't mean anything.'
'That's absolutely horrible,' exclaimed Arthur, 'the most revolting thing I've ever heard.'
'What's the problem Earthman?' said Zaphod, now transfering his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
'I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to,' said Arthur, 'It's heartless.'
'Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten,' said Zaphod.
'That's not the point,' Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. 'Alright,' he said, 'maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just
'May I urge you to consider my liver?' asked the animal, 'it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months.'
'A green salad,' said Arthur emphatically.
'A green salad?' said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
'Are you going to tell me,' said Arthur, 'that I shouldn't have green salad?'
'Well,' said the animal, 'I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.'
It managed a very slight bow.
'Glass of water please,' said Arthur.
'Look,' said Zaphod, 'we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare stakes please, and hurry.
We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years.'
The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.
'A very wise coice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,' it said, 'I'll just nip off and shoot myself.'
He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.
'Don't worry, sir,' he said, 'I'll be very humane.'
It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen.
The first time I read the last line I thought it said They say it's the first time depression has been eliminated through genetic alteration of an orgasm
I thought no shit it's going to be happy. A happy little boinker. Boinky, boinky, boinky.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It is truly an exciting time to be alive...as a mouse.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Wait till they get a look at the mice that end up like the Reavers!
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
exciting? maybe.. happy? ..with out a doubt.
Collector's Edition
So, did that English course go well?
I assume it starts with exposure to Form 1040, then Schedules A, C, asset depreciation rules, and a lot of coffee. It's all downhill from there.
Well, I believe that it really is all the other way around. Church people want us to be unhappy, to feel dirty with sins and all that crap in order to have to run to the church to clean at least part of it, to meet and gather with more sinners to feel you're not the only one (if some other people sins then I'm not that bad).
That's why they don't approve condoms, pills, and as the other answer to your post said, make-me-feel-happy drugs. And they control the government too (Have you ever voted for an atheist?).
Sad and scaried people are easier to control than happy and rational people.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
What's wrong with 'And'?
The parent post and a number of other posts in this thread showcase the lack of understanding people have of depression and the medication used to treat it.
Depression is not sadness. It a serious mental illness that has very detrimental effects on a person's well being and livelyhood. There is no relationship between depression or its treatment and ones ability to feel emotions like outrage and regret.
Antidepressants are used to treat clinical depression. They are not "happy pills." I personally suffered from depression combined with panic disorder that set in approximately two years ago. Since then I have been taking Lexapro which effectively treated my depression and continues to treat my panic disorder. I don't run around feeling happy all day and I still very much posess the ability to feel sad, happy, angry, outraged and regretful.
I especially can't believe the parent's comment about people being non-chalant while on antidepressants. People who make the decision to take antidepressants don't just pop them like tylenol. They take antidepressants because of a mental illness. Did you consider that it could be the depression that is making these people non-chalant? When you're consumed by your own depression it's a little bit difficult not to be non-chalant about what's going on around you. You have bigger things to worry about.
See, the brain (and not only in humans) is nicely tuned to keep needing the next thing to be happy about. Whenever you have some achievement (even small ones, like getting food when you're hungry) the brain gives itself a "yay, I'm happy" chemical signal, but that's followed immediately by releasing the "antidote" to that signal, to get back to the baseline. So you'll need the next achievement for your next moment of joy.
There is considerable truth in what you say. But the neurochemical aspect of this phenomenon is not the whole story. There are cognitive and social elements that are needed to complete the picture.
Much of the story has to do with how poorly we predict the hedonic value of future events. Generally we assign inflated values to resulting future happiness or sadness. Researchers have demonstrated this: we think if we get a particular job, we'll be happy. And we will be, but not as happy for as long as we thought. We think if our child dies we will be sad. And we will be, but usually not in the permanently incapacitating way we thought.
In human society it's also a very important factor in why, for example, consumerism is alive and kicking, and keeping the capitalist economy going well past the point where just the needs are covered
This is true. But I think of this as exploiting a bug in our software: we overestimate the hedonic value of aquiring something; the happiness it brings (as you point out) is short lived. But most insidious are the ways we undermine our own social contacts in order support an aquisitive lifestyle: we take jobs we don't like for people we don't respect. We work long hours to the detriment of our social life, damaging our families or losing touch with our friends.
So my take is that if someone actually produced genetically-engineered humans which are permanently happy, those humans would be even worse
Clearly, happiness seeking is a survival trait. However this does not inevitably lead to insatiable acquisition. That's a function of our massive logic and symbol processing capacity working on faulty data and producing inaccurate results. Putting a naive and immature person into today's consumer culture is like placing an unpatched computer on a hostile network. Forging strong bonds of friendship, cooperation and respect with those around us is also clearly a strong survival trait, and, if researchers are correct, is a stronger producer of happiness than consumption.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Actually, they are toning it down for the article. By happy depression resistant mice researchers generally mean it takes them longer time to give up and decide to let themselves drown in a forced swim experiment. There are some other measures of depression but this is the one I am most familar with and have seen used most often for depression studies.
You know, the funny thing is, I even looked up 'curriculum' on google before I posted, and still managed to mistype it..
Scientists can now produce singing, fearless , cancer resistant, super strong , plague-infected, mice with human brain cells from artificical sperm. On top of that these mice are now happy?!
Said mice were last over heard singing Monty Python's,"Always look on the bright side of life."
God spoke to me.
Robots don't have any emotions, and sometimes that makes me very sad. -- Bender
Well, those mice are. They also produced miserable mice in the process of doing so. Which isn't funny.
P.S. Your singing mice link points to the plague-infected story?
From first hand experience, my time spent on Welbutrin and Zoloft was profoundly helpful in treating my depression. I have been off all medication for over four months now and my brain functions are working well.
My personal growth has been in leaps and bounds over the course of my therapy and I've never been happier in my life.
BUT, I've also experienced the depths of sadness and anger (and all their variations). I am now able to experience those feelings without being drawn down to the depths of depression nor am I compelled to perpetuate dysfunctional behavior.
I think it's hard for people with healthy emotional and physical upbringings to relate to the distorted thinking and perceptions of depressed people. I'm not talking "sad" depressed. I'm talking about "clinically" depressed. There's a huge difference.
In my experience, my clinical depression stemmed from a number of factors including upbringing, genetics (possibly), miseducation (or lack of education), and the effects of personal decisions from that framework (poor choice of marriage, poor choice of lifestyle, etc...). I also know that my experience was my own, no one else's, and that I don't have the capability of knowing what is best for some one else, nor can I fully comprehend another person's experience.
In other words, as a dear friend put it, "who the fuck am I to think I know better than you..." as to what is best for your life? We're not talking parent-child relations, we're talking peer-to-peer.
I see this research as significant from the perspective of learning about biological mechanism. It's research, period. The applications will come later and I can make my decisions on those at that time.
Aside from that, I welcome our Ever Happy Furry Little Rodent Overlords.
sounds to me like those mice have a case of the Mondays
Well, I'm wondering if uprooting depression completely is a good idea. Does depression have a darwinian advantage? Will the ever-happy mouse always remain cheerful and lose the fear trait also, and thus not feel shivers running down its spine upon the sight of a cat. Are there any links between fear and depression? Fear definitely has a well-established darwinian advantage. Have we, as humans, evolved to a stage when fear offers no significant survival advantage?