As far as mental illnesses go, depression is pretty much the single most common one out there – we’re talking the big D of clinical depression, not just feeling off or muggy but real live as far down in the dumps as we go full throttle depression.

A recent brain imaging study has found a very surprising bit regarding genuinely depressed folks in that the area of their brains usually considered the hate circuit seems to be shut down in the brains of folks who are depressed. This is surprising in that there can be a lot of self-loathing in depressives and they don’t seem to have lost the ability to hate others, even though the circuit seems shut down.

See http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2011127a.html for a full summary of the actual work, including other circuits that seem to be affected, often in surprising ways.

It seems we don’t understand Depression as well as we thought we did.

– Brian