On: New studies zero in on roots of depression and how ketamine affects it

[aaavl2821]

It is interesting to see an exploration of astrocyte involvement and the use of optogenetic techniques to establish causality is promising. Hopefully there's more work like this going forward

That said, animal models are poor predictors of human biological activity. Animal models of psychiatric disease are some of the worst offenders. There's plenty of data showing stuff works in rats / mice but not in humans, but just take a step back and think about it: the human brain is unique among all animals, and its uniqueness imbues humans with all sorts of important mental and emotional features (and bugs). a rat brain is a very poor approximation but it's often the best we can do.

[csours → aaavl2821]

Is the human brain a difference in kind or a difference in degree, or both?

[aaavl2821 → csours]

Both; humans brains are obviously bigger, more complex, and a have larger and more complex cerebral cortex (among other differences)

This is a good overview of comparative anatomy in lay terms: https://canvas.brown.edu/courses/851434/pages/comparative-ne...