Fish Depression Is Not a Joke “The neurochemistry is so similar that it’s scary,” said Julian Pittman, a professor at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Troy University in Alabama, where he is working to develop new medications to treat depression, with the help of tiny zebrafish. There’s the obvious issue that “We cannot ask animals how they feel,” says Dr. Diego A. Pizzagalli, the director of the Center For Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research at Harvard Medical School. But what has convinced Dr. Pittman, and others, over the past ten years is watching the way the zebrafish lose interest in just about everything: food, toys, exploration — just like clinically depressed people. Though researchers may find parallels in serotonin and dopamine fluctuations, neither fish nor rat can “capture the entire spectrum of depression as we know it,” says Dr. Pizzagalli. The severity of the depression, he says, can be measured by quantity of time at the top vs. the bottom all of which seemed to confirm my suspicions about Bruce Lee.
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