Happy

The New York Times has an article about neurological observations associated with depression.

This article makes me very happy. You might reasonably ask “Ben, why are you so happy that cortical thinning, and particularly left-hemisphere cortical thinning, is somewhat correlated with clinical depression? After all, isn’t this just yet another article in the popular news media about some inconsequential brain/behavior study?”

The answer lies in this quote:

The scientists’ brain imaging study found the thinning in descendants of depressed parents and grandparents, whether or not the individuals themselves had ever suffered a depressive episode or an anxiety disorder, researchers said.

“That’s what is so extraordinary. You’re seeing it two generations later, and you’re seeing it in both children and adults,” said Dr. Bradley S. Peterson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and the paper’s first author. “And it’s present even if those offspring themselves have not yet become ill.”

While people may assume that a familial trait is genetic, that is not necessarily the case, Dr. Peterson added. “We don’t know if this has a genetic origin or if it’s a consequence of growing up with parents or grandparents who are ill. Studies have shown that when parents are depressed, it changes the environment in which children are growing up.”

That’s right. What we have here is an article about a multigenerational psych study, in the popular press, in which they did not immediately assume that the results come from genetics! This might be the first time I have ever seen them not make that mistake.

Kudos to the journalist, Roni Caryn Rabin, for presenting science instead of speculation, and to Dr. Bradley S. Peterson, who must have emphasized this issue rather strongly. Maybe we are entering a new era, in which social correlations are not totally ignored.