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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
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?
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
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: >.
. . .just quit work and start smoking pot, eating magic mushrooms and dancing on the streets in the nude.
Oh, wow man, you've seen me, huh?
KFG
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.
If they can breed a Goth that's permanently cheerful *then* I'll be impressed.
So, like office workers and deadlines?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Mice don't feel taunted by the universe, to figure out it's secrets.
42, Dude. 42.
KFG
It may actually work the other way around.
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.
It's what keeps humans and all animals active. It's why your cat plays and thus trains its reflexes daily, instead of vegetating in a corner, still happy that it played last month.
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. People keep having these illusions like "man, I would be soo happy if I had that one more gadget/shirt/etc", and they do get happy about it... for a very brief time. Then they need their next achievement. And in turn, getting caught in the consumerism race also keeps them in the rat race at work, and taking shit they otherwise wouldn't put up with.
You can see in "video game addiction" cases what happens when people can stay continuously happy. It's not really physiological addiction, but good games give people small rewards often, which triggers the "yay, I'm happy" signal in the brain. There's always one more quest you finished, one more recipe you learned, one more item that you sold at the auction house (or IRL on eBay), one more boss you defeated, one more equipment piece you found, etc. So some people, which are kept happy enough by that, end up not doing anything else. You can see cases going all the way to playing for a month and then dropping dead.
So my take is that if someone actually produced genetically-engineered humans which are permanently happy, those humans would be even worse. They wouldn't even need video games to stay happy, so they probably wouldn't bother even with that. If you can be perfectly happy sitting on the couch watching the wall, you don't need to do anything else. You don't even need to buy a TV. Nor take shit from a PHB and do overtime to afford a huge plasma TV and a fashionable house in the suburbs. You get the idea.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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..
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.
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.
So, did that English course go well?
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.