After becoming emo, my brain has become smaller...

Audit expert: Yin Tielun

Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Neurology, Airport Branch, Peking University Third Hospital

“I shut myself in.”

“I’m emo.”

…

Nowadays, anxiety and depression are getting closer and closer to us. "Appearance anxiety", "body anxiety" and "wealth anxiety" turn into melancholy, frustration, depression, etc. In fact, depression is a normal psychological phenomenon and a negative emotional reaction that everyone will have. But depression does not equal depression. When depression occurs, it can generally be overcome through self-adjustment, so depression should be relieved in time.

What is depression? Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mood disorder syndrome with significant and prolonged low mood, slow thinking, reduced language and movement as typical symptoms. Its occurrence and development are closely related to functional or organic lesions in some structures of the brain.

Depression has become the fourth largest disease in the world. According to data released by the World Health Organization: the global incidence of depression is about 3.1%, and the total number of people with depression in the world is as high as more than 300 million. The incidence rate of women is significantly higher than that of men (about 2:1), and both young people and the elderly are the high-risk groups for depression.

Source: pixabay

So which part of the brain is made sick by depression? Or which part of the brain is diseased, causing us to feel more negative emotions and aggravating depression? Relevant scholars have conducted a series of studies. Let's take a look at what depression will do to the brain.

Source: https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20210813a09osq00

The first harm that depression causes to the brain is that depression can cause changes in the amygdala in the brain, affecting the circuit that allows us to perceive external information.

Recent neuroimaging studies have found that the occurrence of depression is related to the limbic system-cortex-striatum-pallidum-thalamus circuit (
In fact, structural and functional abnormalities in any brain area in the LCSPT circuit may lead to depression. Most studies focus on changes in the amygdala.

Here we first introduce the amygdala in the brain.

Source: Research Master

The amygdala is located deep in the cerebral cortex. It is named for its almond-like shape and is responsible for important functions such as emotion processing, memory storage, and cognitive learning. It is worth noting that the amygdala is also responsible for the generation, encoding, and storage of negative emotions such as fear and sadness, which is why the occurrence of depression is closely related to changes in the amygdala.

Earlier, American scientists believed that the less social activities people participate in in their daily lives, the smaller the amygdala volume. However, for patients with depression who have relatively few social activities, whether the volume of the amygdala will decrease due to the disease has not yet been determined.

With the development of magnetic resonance imaging systems (MRI) and analysis methods, some researchers have begun to use them to explore changes in the structure and function of the amygdala in patients with depression.

Source: Internet

Through experiments, it was found that compared with healthy people, the low-frequency amplitude of the amygdala in patients with depression increased, which indicates that the spontaneous activity of the amygdala in patients with depression increased in the resting state. At the same time, the researchers found that the resting-state functional connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex was weakened. In summary, the potential mechanism of depression is that the patient's amygdala has spontaneous activity and abnormal connections between the amygdala and other brain regions.

Second, the volume of the hippocampus in depressed patients is smaller than that in normal people.

The hippocampus is an important structure responsible for the storage and conversion of short-term memory in the brain. It is connected to the amygdala mentioned above and the prefrontal cortex of the brain that controls human higher-level cognitive functions (such as execution, decision-making, and thinking).

Source: Wikipedia

The reduction in the size of the hippocampus will directly or indirectly affect the information exchange between it and other structures in the brain. Worse still, a small hippocampus will increase the probability of people feeling stressed, which is a potential factor for mental illness. Mental illness will make the hippocampus smaller, forming a vicious cycle and making it difficult for depression to heal itself.

Third, depression affects the selective expression of genes in the brain.

Although depression cannot change the structure of genes, it will disrupt the original rules of gene expression, resulting in the inhibition of replication, transcription and protein translation of some genes, which in turn affects the production of proteins (such as enzymes), and finally leads to a decrease in the secretion of neurotransmitters and neuronutrients, thereby affecting our emotions.

Treatment of Depression Although the incidence of depression is increasing year by year, the popularization of knowledge about depression has not kept up. Many people still lack a correct understanding of depression, and those who are depressed do not know how to seek help. In the inherent concept of some people, depression is nothing more than an excuse for hypocrisy and escape, rather than a physiological disease like a cold.

In social interactions, people with depression are often misunderstood and easily fall into their own depression, forming a negative cycle, becoming less and less willing to communicate with others or express their emotions. Such long-term repression leads to the deterioration of depressive symptoms. The consequences of severe depression on a person may be devastating, such as self-harm and suicide.

Source: pixabay

The treatment of depression can be traced back to ancient Greece. At first, people believed that depression was caused by demons, and used "exorcism" to treat depression. Later, people realized that depression was actually a physiological disease, so they used bloodletting, vomiting, and diarrhea to eliminate the "melancholic fluid" in the body to treat depression. In the 18th century, British doctors believed that depression could be overcome by self-cultivation, quitting drinking, and changing lifestyle habits.

Source: pixabay

It was not until the 19th century that Shoma Morita founded the "Morita Therapy", which opened up the path to psychotherapy for depression. He advocated following the natural changes in emotions and accepting the emotions generated by the body naturally.

Today, researchers believe that depression is a disease caused by multiple factors, and the treatment of depression has also changed from simple disease treatment to restoring the social function of patients with depression. Among them, the current drug treatments for depression mainly include: tricyclic drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, etc., supplemented by psychotherapy, physical therapy and other methods, forming a complete treatment plan.

Therefore, for patients with depression, it is very necessary to correctly understand depression, know how to adjust their mentality, and seek professional help in time in order to recover their health.