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New Study In Mice Shows That Increasing Serotonin Affects Motivation, But Only In Certain Circumstances (neurosciencenews.com)
New submitter baalcat quotes a report from Neuroscience News: A new study in mice shows that increasing serotonin, one of the major mediators of brain communication, affects motivation -- but only in certain circumstances. Furthermore, the study revealed that the short and long term effects of increased serotonin levels are opposed -- a completely unforeseen property of this neurotransmitter's functional system. A surprising behavioral effect, discovered in mice by neuroscientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (CCU), in Lisbon, Portugal, strongly suggests that serotonin is involved in a biological mechanism which affects the animals' motivation. The study has now been published in the online open access journal eLife. Serotonin, one of the chemical "messengers," or neurotransmitters, in the brain, is used by neurons to communicate with each other. It plays an important role in the regulation of sleep, movement and other behaviors which are essential for animal survival. But for motivation in particular, it was unclear whether serotonin was involved. Using optogenetics, the team stimulated the release of serotonin from neurons in the raphe nuclei. They first induced "peaks" of serotonin by stimulating these neurons with pulses of light, lasting three seconds every ten seconds, over three five-minute time periods. The mice, placed in a box, were left free to explore their environment. In these conditions, their most frequent spontaneous behaviors are walking around, rearing, grooming, digging holes or keeping relatively still, but nevertheless alert. The only difference the scientists saw was that stimulation caused the mice to reduce their locomotive speed by about 50%. In general, this stimulation of serotonin-producing neurons did not affect other behaviors. The effect of these serotonin "peaks" on locomotion was almost instantaneous (speed reduction manifested one second after stimulation) and transient, with things going back to normal after five seconds. But during this short period of time, "the animals acted as if they weren't motivated," says Zach Mainen, who led the study.
Boy, this increased serotonin level really does motivate me!
As someone who's seen SSRI's "work" on people you most find that they lose what they want to do. For some people want they want is unachieveable, but when someone else wants to be a functional person and instead sits around all day and ends up not wanting to get better, that's not an improvement even if they feel better.
It'd be interesting to see them continue this in the face of challenges, like shock floors or social situations.
I'd probably behave the same way if someone was shining a bright light in my face every 10 seconds:
>> speed reduction manifested one second after stimulation and transient, with things going back to normal after five seconds. But during this short period of time, "the animals acted as if they weren't motivated,"
Being the effect was temporary, could it be they just felt "sick" or stunned? A general brain fog?
Isn't this the same effects we see in drug addicts (of downer drugs obv.) ? An almost immediate reduction in activity as contentment sets in.
At least I haven't seen an "active" potsmoker.
I wonder if the long-term effects would be the same for humans and mice as well.
Businesses are trying to figure out how to make employees more motivated. The answer is: ignorance. An operant conditioning box (aka Skinner Box) only works so long as the subject is unaware of the box. The only thing that truly motivates anyone is self interest and a belief that their efforts can achieve it. Once the person has lost the ability to believe they can achieve whatever they put their mind to, motivation plummets to 0. In America, the problem is too many "game theory" players have tricked people using psychology into believing that what they are doing has some meaning to them aka incentivization. In reality, it's all about getting someone to do something for someone else's gain and in many cases to the detriment of the person exerting the actual effort.
We'll make great pets
I understand where the article is coming from, though. Several years ago, I was prescribed an SSRI for anxiety and depression. The first two weeks of taking it made me feel out of myself, like I was a zombie. It wasn't a buzz, it wasn't a fog, it was just this feeling of depersonalization. The first few weeks could be viewed as "demotivating" because I just really didn't care about much in my zombie like state. Everything was dulled. Over the course of those two weeks, this dullness started lifting and I felt like myself again. It took a few more months to adjust completely. Now, I would say my motivation is better than before, because a blanket that made me doubt myself constantly has been lifted.
So at first the mice chillax, aka get the "hey, maybe this isn't so serious after all" feeling, but their reduced feelings of unease allow them to be more relaxed and healthier = more productive in the long run?
Citation needed
There is depression where the primary symptom is suicidal feelings and there is depression where the primary symptom is lack of motivation and anywhere in between. Right now, I am struggling with lack of motivation.
So, can your employer require that you take a pill every day as a condition of employment? Or maybe require that you drink coffee?
For myself, negative ideation (which for me is not suicidal, just an endless litany of everything I've ever done wrong in front of another person) strongly correlates with sleep quality.
As soon as I reach the threshold where the negative thoughts are disruptive to daily life, I take of several effective sleep medications, and—if I manage to get the hard and deep sleep I need—negative ideation is gone again the next day.
Hours in the sack don't count, either. I've had times where I've been getting a solid eight hours of consolidated sleep for an entire week, but still the negative ideation has made an appearance. Sometimes my sleep seems to hollow out so that it's non-restorative on some hidden, inner dimension.
At present, my best sleep-quality aid is 3–4 mg of nortriptyline, a dosage I have custom-compounded at a local compounding pharmacy.
I was originally prescribed amitriptyline, which also worked great to restore my sleep quality, but left me fuzzy-headed the next day.
The later substitution with nortriptyline was based on my own research effort, as was carefully titrating my minimal therapeutic dose (which ends up costing me six times than as much as the minimum standard dose of 10 mg, available in capsule form only—what's less fuzz in the brain the morning after worth to you?)
If I really need to drop the sleep hammer, I take two, then write off part of the next morning to light housework.
I could care less how this or that makes mice into super mice... How about studying humans? (yes I know why they do the studies on mice)