Monday, March 22, 2010

Robert Sapolsky on depression

Wonderful lecture, about 50 minutes, with Robert Sapolsky. Ties stress (glucocorticoids) in with depression.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is a terrific lecture. It makes so much more sense to me now why cognitive distortions contribute greatly to my discomfort, but there is also a sound biological basis for being more prone to depression.

A really nice extra touch was how Sapolsky, almost as an aside, discussed the particular role of serotonin in OCD. I was in my fifties before I found a shrink who diagnosed me as OCD. He nuked it with 60 mg of Prozac per day and I had an incredibly dramatic change in mood. For the first time in my life I actually understood the phrase "I am glad to be alive", up til then I thought that people who said that were in some sort of bizarre denial about how painful life is.

Thanks very much for sharing this.