The Neurocritic

Okay, I'll bite:

> Here's what the science says: "... antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance."

With all due respect, read the paper you linked to! Here's what it says in the places you didn't quote:

"Meta-analyses of antidepressant efficacy based on data from published trials reveal benefits that are statistically significant, but of marginal clinical significance [1]."

"Although the difference between these means easily attained statistical significance (Table 2, Model 3a), it does not meet the three-point drug–placebo criterion for clinical significance used by NICE."

"Although drug type and duration of treatment were unrelated to improvement, the drug versus placebo difference remained significant, and amount of improvement was a function of baseline severity (Table 2, Model 1a)."

"The difference between drug and placebo exceeded NICE's 0.50 standardized mean difference criterion at comparisons exceeding 28 in baseline severity."

> First, you're overlooking the fact that the studies that got SSRIs approved in the first place relied on animal studies using the same animals.

SSRIs were approved several decades ago, but studies in the last decade still show the same effects, e.g. the study I linked to above, which was conducted in 2009 using fluoxetine, which was approved in 1987. The lifespan of a mouse is…

I have a similar story. All my life the letters of the alphabet each had a color associated with it. D is green and K is blue, etc.

One day for no particular reason I decided to pay attention to which color each letter evoked in me. And to my great surprise, it was a simple-ass repeating pattern! Up until this point, I had never actually noticed it. And when I did notice it, it sparked a new mystery for me.

I knew right away that this pattern meant my color associations must have come from some toy blocks or a set of magnetic refrigerator letters. But every single time I saw these toy blocks, or magnets, they never matched the colors in my head!

Finally, about five years ago, a friend of mine out of the blue sent me this link:

https://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/fisher-price-synesthesia.html?m=1

The colors in that link were the same as the ones in my head, and now I knew where I formed those associations. As a toddler playing with magnets on my fridge, that must have been this particular set.

The color association is still there today, and as strong as it ever was. And it kind of helps me recall peoples’ names when I can’t think of them right away. I’ll say goofy shit like, “oh, what was his name?David? Daniel? …It’s some green name.”

This scientist seems to be using this Just So Story for self-promotion, and he has done so for years.[1][2]

He has also attempted to profit personally.[3]

He seems to have the expertise to know that this story is flimsy, and not well-founded in science. Using an unvalidated method in this way could be considered unethical itself. [4]

Dr. Fallon's record of behavior might suggest a pattern of anti-social behavior. His job as a tenured UC professor is, in part, to educate the public. Instead he seems to give us sci-fi.

Of course, I'm just being totally silly, and so is he (not sure about all the writers he has duped over the years.)

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976

[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer.html

[3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-Personal/dp/1591846005

[4] http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public-diagnosis-using.html

Yeah, at least one of the things they report is irrelevant.

>Impaired hippocampal neurogenesis, decreased oligodendrocytes and myelin loss in subcortical white matter were evident at 1 week

I can forgive them for not knowing that the great "Do adults humans have neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus (or EC)" debate has been pretty much ended. We don't. Adult humans don't make new neurons. Humans aren't like other mammals. So... I'm not sure how much the "impared hippocampal neurogenesis" bit applies. Our hippocampal neurogenesis is already impaired. Unless you're pre-pubescent.

ref: "Transcriptomic taxonomy and neurogenic trajectories of adult human, macaque, and pig hippocampal and entorhinal cells" Franjic et al., 2022 https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(21)00866-7.pdf

laymen ref: https://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-ongoing-debate-about-hippocampal.html