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I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://ast

I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-death https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d... It's also possible the memory loss is partly a treatment effect and not a side effect. It might be weakening some of these learned patterns is what helps shake loose the depression. "Put these two lines of research together and you get something like: synapse density increases over the course of the day, then sleep prunes it down again. Depression is associated with low synapse density. So it would make sense that depression gets better over the course of the day (including the extra-long artificial days of sleep deprivation) and then gets worse again after sleep."

agumonkey 6y ago
> It's also possible the memory loss is partly a treatment effect and not a side effect. Very plausible but imo very dangerous, a lot of your emotions are rooted in your memories and weakening the network could very much lead to loss of self or incoherence.
Delk 6y ago
> I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d... This is entirely subjective but I suspect there might be something else at play than anything mentioned in that blog post. (edit: that is, when it comes to sleep deprivation vs depression.) I've had to go through depression myself, and also noticed that my mood is different when I'm sleep-deprived. The mood when sleep-deprived would often be elevated, assuming I didn't have to force myself to do something that required concentration. I'm not sure that state is so much an absence of depression as it might be a slightly hyper mood. (I once read someone's comment on the topic somewhere that it seems like the depression gets replaced by some kind of a hypomania-like state rather than a normal, non-depressed mood. I don't even remember where that comment was and it was also just speculation, but it rang a bell.) I've noticed that kind of slightly hyper mood has also happened when sleep deprived outside of a depressive episode. (Perhaps it is in compensation for feeling tired when you for some reason psych yourself to still staying active, or something.) It might feel preferable to a depressed state but I'm slightly sceptical of the idea that something with a similar mechanism could be used directly to return to a normal non-depressive state. I don't know about ECT though.

agumonkey 6y ago

> It's also possible the memory loss is partly a treatment effect and not a side effect. Very plausible but imo very dangerous, a lot of your emotions are rooted in your memories and weakening the network could very much lead to loss of self or incoherence.

Delk 6y ago

> I thought this was pretty interesting and goes into a hypothesis of why ECT might be effective (in the context of sleep deprivation being effective) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sleep-is-the-mate-of-d... This is entirely subjective but I suspect there might be something else at play than anything mentioned in that blog post. (edit: that is, when it comes to sleep deprivation vs depression.) I've had to go through depression myself, and also noticed that my mood is different when I'm sleep-deprived. The mood when sleep-deprived would often be elevated, assuming I didn't have to force myself to do something that required concentration. I'm not sure that state is so much an absence of depression as it might be a slightly hyper mood. (I once read someone's comment on the topic somewhere that it seems like the depression gets replaced by some kind of a hypomania-like state rather than a normal, non-depressed mood. I don't even remember where that comment was and it was also just speculation, but it rang a bell.) I've noticed that kind of slightly hyper mood has also happened when sleep deprived outside of a depressive episode. (Perhaps it is in compensation for feeling tired when you for some reason psych yourself to still staying active, or something.) It might feel preferable to a depressed state but I'm slightly sceptical of the idea that something with a similar mechanism could be used directly to return to a normal non-depressive state. I don't know about ECT though.