Posted by leeran on April 30, 2003, at 2:11:11
In reply to Re: What are you depressed about? Arggggh, posted by maryhelen on April 30, 2003, at 1:36:46
Hi Maryhelen -
There was a lengthy discussion of neurons/dendrites/synapses during a pregnancy/birthing class I took before my son was born and I guess it just stuck with me (or maybe it goes back to high school biology, since I never took that type of course in college).
My referral to "dead end dendrites" was my wry (and silly) observation that my dendrites are no longer working, or in other words, no longer able to fire synapses back and forth, which in turn, may trigger depression.
SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) work (I believe) by interrupting the synapse so that enough serotonin gathers on the end of a neuron to illicit a proper "firing" between the different dendrites.
Our brains are so incredibly complex. It just goes to show that the question posed to me yesterday ("what are you depressed about?") can go a lot deeper than just missing the big sale at Macy's.
Someone else mentioned a chemical imbalance (I think it was Ayuda). When you think of depression in that way it removes some of the stigma.
Maryhelen, I don't think you are dense at all. I'm just geeky when it comes to remembering certain things. At other times, I can't remember what I had for lunch!
Have a good night -
Lee
Here are a few links:http://www.nmhct.nhs.uk/pharmacy/moa-ssri.htm
Here's another link:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artoct02/gohisto2.html
"A neuron has one cell body, containing the nucleus and surrounding cytoplasm (perikaryon), one axon (up to one meter in length), and one or more dendrites, which extend from the cell body. Dendrites are highly branched and form a so called dendritic tree. The axon splits into several branches. Each of them ends in so called terminal buttons. Those terminal buttons exchange signals over the synaptic gap via neurotransmitters to dendrites of a neighboring dendritic tree belonging to an other neuron. (See Fig. 1 for a simple drawing of two neurons.)"
Here's another link
poster:leeran
thread:223074
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030426/msgs/223376.html