Hasta La Gadget!

Anti-depressants are the most commonly-prescribed medication in the U.S., with one in 10 Americans currently taking pills like Zoloft and Lexapro to treat depression. But these pharmaceuticals are only effective less than 30 percent of the time, and often come with troublesome side effects.

In a controversial new paper published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, psychologist Paul Andrews of McMaster University in Ontario argues that this failure of medication may be based in a misunderstanding of the underlying chemistry related to depression.

Andrews surveyed 50 years’ worth of research supporting the serotonin theory of depression, which suggests that the disease is caused by low levels of the “happiness” neurotransmitter, serotonin.

But Andrews argues that depression may actually be caused by elevated levels of serotonin. And this fundamental misunderstanding may be responsible for inappropriate treatment: The most common form of antidepressants are selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which operate by targeting serotonin receptors in the brain in an effort to amplify serotonin production.

Currently, scientists are unable to measure precisely how the brain releases and uses serotonin, because it can’t be safely observed in a human brain. But Andrews points to research on animals which suggests that serotonin might work just the opposite from what we’ve assumed.

In this scenario, elevated serotonin levels that are released and used by the brain during depressive episodes trigger processes that promote rumination — the obsessive negative thinking that is the hallmark of depression. Then, because they facilitate the production of serotonin, SSRI treatments exacerbate rumination and actually worsen symptoms of depression, especially at first, Andrews explained. Over time, in come cases, the SSRIs can reverse ruminative processes and reduce symptoms — but this is in spite of the medication, not because of it.

HuffPost Science spoke to Andrews about why we’ve gotten anti-depressants “backwards” — and what the future of depression treatment might hold.

HuffPost: Where did the low-serotonin hypothesis originate?

Andrews: The hypothesis didn’t originate because anybody measured serotonin in depression or in any depressed-like state in an animal. It’s really based on circumstantial evidence. Researchers back in the ’40s and ’50s happened to find that certain drugs that were trying to treat tuberculosis and schizophrenia had depression-relieving properties, and they wondered, why were they relieving depressive symptoms? They eventually figured out that the drugs increased serotonin in rodent models…. They reasoned that if these drugs relieved depressive symptoms in humans — and, as best as we can tell, they increased serotonin — then depression must be a state of low or reduced serotonin transmission.

There have been problems with the low-serotonin hypothesis for a while. If you look to any serious neuroscientist, they’ll all acknowledge that there are serious problems with it. It still is, nevertheless, the backbone of research on depression in neuroscience.

What evidence is there to suggest that the low-serotonin hypothesis of depression may not be accurate?

There is no way to be absolutely certain for two reasons. First, we cannot directly measure how fast serotonin is released, or transmitted. You can’t do that even in a rat. You can measure the concentration of serotonin in a particular brain region, but you can’t measure the transmission of it. The transmission would be to measure the release of the serotonin into the synapse.

The only thing we can measure is a marker of transmission, which reflects what happens to serotonin after it is released into the synapse and metabolized. Second, it is currently impossible to study this issue in humans without cutting holes in their skulls. But these studies can be done in animals. In these studies, there is abundant evidence that this marker of transmission is elevated.

We reviewed 15 different models of depression that are used in neuroscience research that had measured this particular marker that we’re concerned with. Of those 15 studies, 13 were consistent with the high-serotonin hypothesis, and the other two were not inconsistent with it. If you extrapolate to humans… that would strongly suggest that the evidence is in favor of the high-serotonin hypothesis of depression.

OK, so how do anti-depressants work then?

Another problem with the low serotonin hypothesis is that these drugs increase serotonin pretty rapidly, within minutes to hours. You’d think that if the low serotonin hypothesis was true, the anti-depressant drugs would work rapidly too. But they don’t — it takes three to four weeks for their symptom-reducing effects to kick on. So there’s always been this disconnect between the onset of the pharmacological effects of the anti-depressants and their therapeutic effects.

So what’s actually happening to depressive symptoms when you first start taking these drugs? Well, it’s extremely common for people to start saying “I feel worse” rather than getting better. That’s theoretically important because these drugs are working very quickly in terms of increasing serotonin. So what’s happening to serotonin in the brain as those three or four weeks pass? It’s falling…. As time goes on [after the initial peak], serotonin dips below the baseline and that’s when you actually start feeling better.

But things will eventually smooth out again and the brain will return to its steady state. That’s what happens over prolonged anti-depressant use. Even when taking the drugs, people experience relapses. They might have that initial worsening of symptoms, then they’ll feel better, and over prolonged period of use, they’ll tell the doctor that the drugs aren’t working anymore… And commonly the doctor will increase the dose or add on another drug.

But the brain is always fighting these drugs and trying to bring itself back to its homeostatic equilibrium.

Antidepressants are known to cause many side effects. What are some of the most common?

Limited efficacy at reducing depressive symptoms, sexual difficulties, difficulty concentrating, and problems with the digestive system are the most common. But many other types of problems can occur, including increased risk of relapse, a decrease in bone mineral density, abnormal bleeding, stroke, suicidal behaviour. Some of these problems can cause death — several studies have shown that anti-depressants, especially in older people, are associated with an increased risk of death.

You all them all up, and they all can be potentially serious things.

What do you think is the future of depression treatment?

As people and physicians become more aware that antidepressants only work for a limited period of time, and are less safe than they have been supposed, the use of antidepressant medications will decline and the use of psychotherapies will increase.

I would suggest that the attempt to pharmacologically reduce depressive symptoms is not likely to produce lasting effects. You can get these temporary effects, but they’re not likely to be lasting effects, and they can cause a whole lot of problems.

Psychotherapy is more likely to produce lasting effects, and can help people cope with the things that actually triggered their depressive episodes, and that’s why these therapies are more productive in the long run.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Sorry to break it to you, but your dog probably has no recollection of that fun game of fetch the two of you played yesterday. And that yummy treat you gave him just minutes ago? Even that has probably gone poof!

The truth is, a dog’s memory just isn’t very good. And a new study suggests that the same is true for 25 other animal species, from bees and birds to big mammals. Their recall of specific events disappears within minutes or even seconds.

“When it comes to short-term memory, it seems to work almost the same for all animals,” Dr. Johan Lind, a professor of ethology ethology at Stockholm University in Sweden and the study’s lead author, said in a written statement. “It’s a bit surprising that apes do not remember better than rats, but the results are clear. Human memory stands out because it is so susceptible, anything seems to stick in the memory for a very long time.”

For their study, a “meta-analysis” of previous research, Lind and his colleagues analyzed nearly 100 studies in which captive animals performed a short-term memory test. In the first part of the test, an animal is briefly exposed to some visual stimulus — a red dot, for example. After a brief delay, the animal is shown the same stimulus a second time, along with one or more additional stimuli — a black square, for instance. If the animal is able to identify the original stimulus, it is rewarded with a treat.

The animals didn’t quite ace the test. In fact, average memory span across all species was a paltry 27 seconds. Bees’ memories lasted about 2.5 seconds, chimps about 20 seconds. Dogs came out on top, but their memories dried up after only 70 seconds.

In contrast, previous research showed that humans who performed the memory task could remember that little red dot when tested a couple of days later, National Geographic reported.

“You can remember the name of a subway station, where you put you mobile phone or if your daughter laughed at your joke during breakfast,” Lind told The Huffington Post in an email. “In contrast, when non-human animals remember something for a long time, it is probably only possible for biologically relevant stimuli so that the event taps into a specialized memory; like the location of food for a caching animal… or perhaps the sound or looks of your offspring.”

In other words, he said animals may have two kinds of memory systems: one that retains information about events for a brief span of time, and another that retains long-term memories only for specific types of information.

Lind thinks that only humans have an “open memory system” that can store any type of information long-term, including memories for specific events — called “episodic memories.” But other scientists who were not involved in the meta-analysis think it’s a bit premature to rule out the possibility that non-human animals can remember events too.

“The study of episodic memory is crucial, since it is still under debate whether other animals can retrieve memories of personal past events in the same way humans do,” Dr. Gema Martin-Ordas, who studies animal and human cognition at Newcastle University’s Institute of Neuroscience in England, told National Geographic. She added that “it might be too early to argue that humans are the only ones who are able to mentally travel back and forward in time.”

The review was accepted for publication in the journal Behavioural Processes.

Sacramento, CA – DeMarcus Cousins sat out with a sprained left ankle and bruised left hip. Without him in the lineup the Kings were unable to contain the San Antonio Spurs who ended their four-game skid behind a revived Tony Parker. Sacramento lost their second game under new head coach George Karl behind Parker’s aggressiveness in the fourth quarter.

“Tony played great,” said Spurs head coach Greg Popovich. “He got to the basket, he shot open jumpers, he distributed the ball. He was what we’re used to seeing from Tony Parker.”

Parker came out his slump to power the Spurs past the Kings 107-96. He scored 11 points in the fourth quarter and finished with 19 points, five rebounds and five assists. Kawhi Leonard added 17 points and seven rebounds posing problems for Rudy Gay who had 16 points and 8 turnovers that proved costly.

“He got off to a great start, but Kawhi Leonard is a good defender,” Karl said. “Rudy didn’t have a bad game, we just maybe forced the flow to him too often. He made a few mistakes, but I don’t think we would’ve even been in that game without Rudy. Rudy was a big part of why we hung around until the fourth quarter.”

“They didn’t make any mistakes; we made a bunch of mistakes,” said Gay. “I made most of them to be honest with you.”

Sacramento got off to a great start leading by as much as 10 points but the turnovers in the end were too much. The Kings shot 49 percent but had 17 turnovers. Ben McLemore scored 21 points and Ray McCallum who started in place of Daren Collison (out with a right hip flexor strain) had 20 points.

Karl warned his team that a struggling San Antonio team meant nothing and that they were still the defending NBA Champions. He explained that a four-game skid was merely their way of playing “possum” until they move further up the Western Conference standings.

“I think they’re playing possum,” Karl said. “They’re still a championship team and I don’t care how many games they’ve lost, they know how to play playoff basketball and I’m sure they’re looking to move up the Western Conference.”

The Spurs became more aggressive in the fourth while the Kings were cooling off. Carl Landry who started in place of Cousins picked up his fourth foul late in the second quarter. San Antonio never trailed in the second half and kept their lead to six until Parkers layup with under six minutes for the 93-86 lead.

“Yeah, much better execution down the stretch,” said Tim Duncan. “Defensively, I thought we were much better tonight. Actually got stops. Got some boards and turned it into transition points for us. Just good to get a win, good to get off the slide a little bit there and get a win and hope we build on that.”

On February 1, 1960 four black students sat down at a segregated lunch counter I Greensboro, NC sparking one of Black America’s largest waves of protest. By the end of February the sit-in movement had grown to thirty communities in seven states and by April had spread across the entire South, involving up to 50,000 participants. Over the next decade the leaders who emerged out of this wave of actions would carry out some of the most important campaigns of the Civil Rights movement — from the Freedom Rides to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s challenge to racism of the Democratic Party. Eventually their work would help to topple the Jim Crow regime and launch the Black Power movement.

In the decade after the sit-ins, these new leaders would experience both incredible triumphs and crushing defeats. They would try different strategies and tactics for Black liberation from direct action to bring down segregation to voter registration to build Black political power. Underlying every new stage of the struggle was a deep dedication to breaking the chains of fear and internalized inferiority and transforming the conditions of violence and exploitation that limited the potential for the full flourishing of Black lives. For these leaders, personal liberation and social transformation were inseparable and the role of leadership was, at its heart, the practice of supporting everyday people in taking effective action to transform themselves and their conditions in the face of great odds and uncertain outcomes.

Today we talk about this style of personal and social transformation and this approach to leadership as transformative organizing. For the transformative organizers, leadership is understood more as a practice than a position, more a relationship than a role. Leadership is not simply a place in an organizational structure, it is a discipline and a path — a calling to become powerful catalysts of and embodiments of transformation. In the context of Black organizing, we call this the path of Black mastery.

Each leader and moment in the history of the Black Freedom Movement offers rich lessons for us. However, as we reflect on the current movement moment, we think there are eight elements of Black mastery that are most relevant for us today: courage, compassion, authenticity, accountability, rigor, resilience, attention, and agility. We find it useful to group them into four pairs, where the element balance each other.

Courage & Compassion

As poet and revolutionary Audre Lorde reminds us, courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act even when we are afraid. Compassion is the ability to understand, to feel deeply, both the suffering and the joy of others. It is the ability to literally feel the humanity of others and to act from that place. Social justice movements practice compassion and courage when they insist on the humanity of oppressed people and challenge society to respect that humanity.

But we also need to practice courage and compassion with ourselves and with each other. It takes courage and compassion to acknowledge our own weaknesses and breakdowns — our own humanity as leaders and as a movement. We must learn how to work with both our strengths and our tender places.

Authenticity & Accountability

When we are authentic, we are true to ourselves. In the face of repression and violence or the forces of cooptation, it is tempting not to be authentic. It can be difficult to acknowledge when we don’t know something or when we’ve made a mistake. And for some of us who have been socialized not to speak or to dream, it can be difficult to confidently stand in our true vision and beliefs. But it is when we are authentic that others are moved, that others are able to feel and touch our humanity and connect more deeply to their own.

Accountability — the willingness and ability to accept responsibility and to account for one’s actions — is the other side of this coin. Our actions and our words have consequences. As we learn to speak and act with authenticity we must also learn to speak and act with accountability.

Rigor & Resilience

To be rigorous is to be precise and disciplined and flows from accountability. When we understand and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, we become more and more able to act with skill and precision. Black mastery requires us to hold ourselves and each other to rigorous standards.

At the same time, we must also cultivate our resilience. Resilience is the ability to restore our strength, health, and well-being after experiencing something difficult or traumatic. It flows from our ability to touch our joy and to practice connecting with the things that bring us to life and connection. Without resilience we burn out.

Attention & Agility

In many ways the ability to attend to the world around us and ourselves is the foundation of Black mastery. Attention allows us to stay in touch with what we care about as well as whats happening with others and the world around us. Conditions are always changing, especially in social movements, and attention is the skill that allows us to notice what’s happening so that we can act effectively.

Finally, agility is the ability to move, to pivot and shift easily and quickly. Knowing that things have changed and that our movement or our leadership needs to shift isn’t enough. We actually have to be able to move, to be nimble.

It is not accidental that these elements reflect physical, emotional and feeling concepts. The reason being is that we will not simply mastermind our way into leadership but we must work to embody these elements for them to be recognized, and of service to our work and our people. This is the work of leadership development that is not found in a book or thinking differently but rather within our full body self – emotions, sensations, feelings and mental narratives.

Like every discipline, every tradition, Black mastery is an intergenerational affair. No generation of leaders make themselves from scratch but they draw from what has come before them. We have drawn from our elders experiences who share our ethics of Black Mastery, low ego/high impact to build our leader-ful next moment.

We will know that Black Lives Matter when each of us is supported in embodying Black mastery and our full leadership potential.

This post is part of the “Black Future Month” series produced by The Huffington Post and Black Lives Matter for Black History Month. Each day in February, this series will look at one of 28 different cultural and political issues affecting Black lives, from education to criminal-justice reform. To follow the conversation on Twitter, view #BlackFutureMonth — and to see all the posts as part of our Black History Month coverage, read here.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is doubling down on claims that the strongest foreign policy move in his lifetime was former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers.

In 1981, almost 13,000 air traffic control employees walked off the job when contract negotiations between the federal government and the controllers union stalled. Reagan claimed the strike was illegal and demanded the air traffic controllers return to work; when some 11,000 did not, he fired them.

Walker, who has long idolized Reagan and previously lauded the former president’s standoff with air traffic control, on Saturday called it “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime” during an address at the Club for Growth’s winter meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“It sent a message not only across America, it sent a message around the world,” Walker said, according to The Washington Post, claiming the action showed foreign allies and enemies that “we weren’t to be messed with.”

Walker made almost identical comments during a January MSNBC appearance, where he claimed there were documents that proved the Soviet Union treated the U.S. differently following the standoff.

“Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case,” he said. “The Soviet Union started treating [Reagan] more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think [President Barack Obama] has failed mainly because he’s made threats and hasn’t followed through on them.”

PolitiFact investigated the claims, finding no evidence the documents ever existed. “It’s utter nonsense,” Jack Matlock, Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, told PolitiFact. “There is no evidence of that whatever.”

And yet, Walker has committed to highlighting his own dealings with unions to prove his ability to take on foreign threats, like the Islamic State. During a Thursday address at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Walker touted his confrontation with right-to-work protesters in Wisconsin as proof he can take on threats from the Middle East.

“If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” Walker said Thursday, after being asked how he would stand up to the Islamic State.

Walker made the same comparison earlier this month at a dinner for prominent conservative donors, according to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow.

“Walker argued that when Reagan fired air traffic controllers (from the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) over their illegal strike, he was sending a message of toughness to Democrats and unions at home as well as our Soviet enemies abroad,” Kudlow wrote of Walker’s remarks. “Similarly, Walker believes his stance against unions in Wisconsin would be a signal of toughness to Islamic jihadists and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.”