Depression & Hibernation

[v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com]

I was thinking about how depression might be a vestigial urge to
hibernate. Think of this: you face a number of events leading to
fight/flight urges which were impossible to execute. Hence you load up
your serotonergic springs but never fire them. Eventually it is such
an overload, you just sleep it off for the winter. Esp interesting
that hibernation isn't localised on the evolutionary tree, but
splattered throughout.



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Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist
BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Remorse begets zeal] [Windows is for Bimbos]
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]

[v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com]

You have to recall the Russian electrosleep therapy where the
depressed patient was put to sleep for a few weeks. It was mentioned
in my Rypins two decades ago.

- = -
Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist
BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Remorse begets zeal] [Windows is for Bimbos]
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]

[Voice of Reason]

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
You have to recall the Russian electrosleep therapy where the
depressed patient was put to sleep for a few weeks. It was mentioned
in my Rypins two decades ago.

Hibernation isn't 'sleep'. It is more like a partial metabolic shutdown or
form of suspended animation.

Some creatures have adopted this mechanism for surviving extended periods
of cold weather when food is scarce, and they prepare carefully well in
advance by increasing their food intake during the abundant autumn months
in order to store body energy reserves.

In a hibernating animal the body temperature falls sharply (often to just
above freezing) and vital functions such as respiration and heartbeat slow
to a bare subsistence level. In sleep these functions slow down to some
degree but not appreciably. As well, a living thing is fairly easily roused
from sleep but a hibernating animal can endure quite vigorous stimulus
without being disturbed. A hibernating animal typically requires a fairly
extended period to revive from this state.

Some creatures (squirrels and raccoons come to mind) may sleep for extended
periods during cold weather but this isn't true hibernation as a mild spell
will see them up and around looking for food.

[Voice of Reason]

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
I was thinking about how depression might be a vestigial urge to
hibernate. Think of this: you face a number of events leading to
fight/flight urges which were impossible to execute. Hence you load up
your serotonergic springs but never fire them. Eventually it is such
an overload, you just sleep it off for the winter. Esp interesting
that hibernation isn't localised on the evolutionary tree, but
splattered throughout.

More likely it is just the normal response of non-hibernating species (such
as humans) to the partial confinement, limitiation of activity and
decreased natural light associated with winter in the temperate zones.

If they could communicate with us I don't doubt many other animal species
that stay abroad in the winter would have similar feelings to share.
Limited mobility, harder to stay warm, fewer choices in food (if food is
even available)... I'm sure you get the picture.

Come about February many people are feeling restless and disillusioned.
This tends to go away as the days get longer and the weather warms up. The
oldsters called this phenomena 'cabin fever', which is a much more apt
description than the cumbersome, windy labels the shrinks cook up.

[Voice of Reason]

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
I was thinking about how depression might be a vestigial urge to
hibernate. Think of this: you face a number of events leading to
fight/flight urges which were impossible to execute. Hence you load up
your serotonergic springs but never fire them. Eventually it is such
an overload, you just sleep it off for the winter. Esp interesting
that hibernation isn't localised on the evolutionary tree, but
splattered throughout.

More likely it is just the normal response of non-hibernating species (such
as humans) to the partial confinement, limitiation of activity and
decreased natural light associated with winter in the temperate zones.

If they could communicate with us I don't doubt many other animal species
that stay abroad in the winter would have similar feelings to share.
Limited mobility, harder to stay warm, fewer choices in food (if food is
even available)... I'm sure you get the picture.

Come about February many people are feeling restless and disillusioned.
This tends to go away as the days get longer and the weather warms up. The
oldsters called this phenomena 'cabin fever', which is a much more apt
description than the cumbersome, windy labels the shrinks cook up.

[Peter F]

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
I was thinking about how depression might be a vestigial urge to
hibernate. Think of this: you face a number of events leading to
fight/flight urges which were impossible to execute. Hence you load up
your serotonergic springs but never fire them. Eventually it is such
an overload, you just sleep it off for the winter. Esp interesting
that hibernation isn't localised on the evolutionary tree, but
splattered throughout.

You might be ready to consider my concept of
"specific hibernation".

The meaning of specific hibernation is best understood if compared with
"general hibernation".

"General hibernation" corresponds to the classical, conventional meaning
of the word hibernation (and also, for this *metabolism muting* matter, of
the meaning of aestivation).

Specific (and/or synaptic) hibernation is an adaptation to IRREGULARLY
OCCURRING inescapable lifetime predicaments.
It is also a self-regulatory synaptic inhibitory function that prevents
the realization of the potential for self-defeatingly (or dinstinctly
maladaptive)
distress/pain or futile flight or fight type "actentions" - or ditto
"focuses
(or paying) of actention".

The fuel for such self-defeating actentions are the excitatory firing of
sensory processing neurons within the sensorium.

Free access of such sensory stimuli (such sensorially
monitored, analyzed, and sometimes dynamically retained, neural
representations of thus influential adverse environmental influences,
features,
and factors) to the "visceromotor motivating" hypothalamic areas, the basal
ganglia, and
the some limbic and frontal lobe cortices (regions responsible for
organizing and
motivating a wide range of actentions) is what would be maladaptive.

It is the specific synaptic gating and thereby prevention of transmission of
neural information that would energize certain potentially directly distress
driving
neurons' firing and that thereby keeps their metabolism relatively muted
(and silences their firing) that qualifies this function for being called
"specific hibernation".

"Specific hibernation imploring type situations" (or ditto stressors/sensory
stimulation)
are situations that in our phylogeny as well as in our own lives
could only be adaptively coped with if the genome and phenotype of thus
adversely
challenged individuals actually did *induce* a specific hibernation
involving type of
self-regulatory response.

This is to me a worthwhile way of describing and defining the kind of
*selective unconsciousness* (and other symptoms) that result from
*any kind* of survived "traumatization" - including cases of SHITS (come
CURSES)
that does not have future repercussions that trendy
psychologists/psychiatrists would
class as "PTSD".

P