Depression: Confused brain theory.
The Death of Robin Williams has made me very sad. It also triggered thinking about depression, and an idea came to me. The idea of the “Confused Brain”.
Since the beginning of the human species, our bodies have developed by way of specific cues triggering specific responses. This way the human body and brain function in harmony. Studying obesity, I have developed a theory that uninterrupted gut-brain communication is the key for staying lean. For hundreds of thousands of years human gut-brain communication has functioned based on the principle that specific foods were sending very specific signals to the brain. Based on these signals the brain responded by keeping the human body in nutritive balance. Since the introduction of diet products, in the second half of twentieth century, the human brain started to receive confusing signals. Diet soda was sweet, but the brain was not receiving information about calories. This lack of appropriate combination of signals, triggered by “fake food”, was making our brain confused, alters the feedback and makes us gain weight. The current obesity research supports this theory.
But I started with depression. You probably ask yourself, “Why he is talking about obesity when he wants to reveal a theory about depression?” And this is what I think: As with nutritive balance, humans developed emotional balance. This emotional balance was functioning pretty well until the introduction of fake feelings. A fake smile is not delivering, to the brain, a complete combination of signals. Saying I love you, without meaning it, makes the brain confused. In the modern society, of Facebook and Twitter, we are bombarded every day by “fake feelings”. I think that these fake emotional signals, like “fake foods”, make our brain confused and trigger depression.
Aren't fake feelings of all times and all folks? Even chimpansees practice it, I understood from the writings of Frans de Waal. If you are bombarded with them by your close ones, like parents, spouse, children, intimate friends, you may end up depressed, I suppose. However, not because of a confused brain but because of lacking real contact, the fuel for human existence. If you have to rely on your social media contacts alone, lacking in vivo contacts, you probably will end up depressed too, even if all the messages you received had been sincere.
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