Can Brain Scans See Depression? - New York Times (10/18/05)

Found this link on another board and thought it was good enough to share here. Good article in the NY Times from 10/18/05 on how there is no proof that the overly promoted brain scans used to prove diagnoses work at all. Finally a reputable and widely read paper saying it like it is! I have complete faith that we will see more and more information like this coming to light...including the myths behind medication being a necessary part of treatments in many so-called 'disorders'. Halleluiah!!!

The article can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/healt ... gewanted=2
(It was too long to copy and paste here, but definitely worth checking out in my opinion )

Hi stopthemadness,

Thanks for posting this article.

I believe that brain scans can show what is happening in the brain, like what sections are being used. However, I do not think they show causes. I'm sure that depression will affect certain brain areas, but I do not think they show what caused the sections of the brain to be turned on or off. I wonder if there is a difference in brain scans of someone in depression compared to someone with normal major grief say from the death of a loved one.

Thanks for telling us about the article.

James

stopthemadness,

Thanks for that article. It's a good one, I'm going to post that up on a few more sites.

I saw a science show 2 nights ago about trust. What these brain boys did this time was squirt a hormone normally released by the body during orgasm up the nose of a person to increase trust.

They had branscans to show this and that and they talked about curing mental illness and disease with this new hormone. It was only near the end of the show that they interviewed doctor that had tried the same trust experiment in other societies, he got completely different results.

Here's a link to the transcript of the show.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/ ... m#contacts

It's frustrating that they aired this story when it was a flawed study.
It just added to the myth that feelings of distress, is a disease of the brain.