Very interesting, thanks! I hadn’t thought that before, but now I agree with parts of what you said.
One thing is: I think you present some suggestive evidence that REM sleep is an important intervention point that can help mitigate depression / mania. But I think you haven’t presented much evidence that REM sleep abnormalities are (usually) the root cause that led to the depression / mania starting in the first place. Maybe they are, maybe not, I dunno.
Certainly mood disorders like bipolar,depression,mania can have multiple causes—for examle simply doing too much dopaminergic simulants (cocaine, meth etc) can cause mania directly.
But the modern increased prevalence of mood disorders is best explained by a modern divergence from conditions in the ancestral environment, and sleep disorder due to electric lighting disrupting circadian rhythms is a good fit to the evidence.
The evidence for each of my main points is fairly substantial and now mainstream, the only part which isn’t mainstream (yet) is the specific causal mechanism linking synaptic pruning/normalization to imbalance in valence computing upper brain modules (but it’s also fairly straightforward obvious from a DL perspective—we know that training stability is an intrinsic likely failure mode).
Sleep disturbance and psychiatric disorders : “It is argued that insomnia and other mental health conditions not only share common causes but also show a bidirectional relationship, with typically the strongest pathway being disrupted sleep as a causal factor in the occurrence of other psychiatric problems.”
The effectiveness of circadian interventions through the blue light pineal gland serotonin->melatonin pathway is also very well established: daytime bright light therapy has long been known to be effective for depression, nighttime blue light reduction is now also recognized as important/effective, etc.
The interventions required to promote healthy sleep architecture are not especially expensive and are certainly not patentable, so they are in a blindspot for our current partially misaligned drug-product focused healthcare system. Of course there would be a market for a hypothetical drug which could target and fix the specific issues that some people have with sleep quality—but instead we just have hammers like benzos and lithium which cause as many or more problems than they solve.
Very interesting, thanks! I hadn’t thought that before, but now I agree with parts of what you said.
One thing is: I think you present some suggestive evidence that REM sleep is an important intervention point that can help mitigate depression / mania. But I think you haven’t presented much evidence that REM sleep abnormalities are (usually) the root cause that led to the depression / mania starting in the first place. Maybe they are, maybe not, I dunno.
Certainly mood disorders like bipolar,depression,mania can have multiple causes—for examle simply doing too much dopaminergic simulants (cocaine, meth etc) can cause mania directly.
But the modern increased prevalence of mood disorders is best explained by a modern divergence from conditions in the ancestral environment, and sleep disorder due to electric lighting disrupting circadian rhythms is a good fit to the evidence.
The evidence for each of my main points is fairly substantial and now mainstream, the only part which isn’t mainstream (yet) is the specific causal mechanism linking synaptic pruning/normalization to imbalance in valence computing upper brain modules (but it’s also fairly straightforward obvious from a DL perspective—we know that training stability is an intrinsic likely failure mode).
A few random links:
wikipedia page on sleep and bipolar
The role of CLOCK gene in psychiatric disorders: Evidence from human and animal research
REM and synaptic normalization/pruning/homeostasis:
Sleep and synaptic homeostasis
Mechanisms of systems memory consolidation during sleep
Functions and circuits of REM sleep
Plasticity during sleep is linked to specific regulation of cortical circuit activity
Sleep and synaptic down-selection
Sleep promotes downward firing rate homeostasis
REM sleep promotes experience-dependent dendritic spine elimination in the mouse cortex.
REM sleep selectively prunes and maintains new synapses in development and learning
Memory corticalization triggered by REM sleep: mechanisms of cellular and systems consolidation
Remembering and forgetting in sleep: Selective synaptic plasticity during sleep driven by scaling factors Homer1a and Arc
LRRK2 Deficiency Aggravates Sleep Deprivation-Induced Cognitive Loss by Perturbing Synaptic Pruning in Mice
Sleep and wake cycles dynamically modulate hippocampal inhibitory synaptic plasticity
Sleep and Psychiatric Disorders:
Sleep disturbance and psychiatric disorders : “It is argued that insomnia and other mental health conditions not only share common causes but also show a bidirectional relationship, with typically the strongest pathway being disrupted sleep as a causal factor in the occurrence of other psychiatric problems.”
Improving sleep quality leads to better mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials: “For example, people with insomnia are 10 and 17 times more likely than those without insomnia to experience clinically significant levels of depression and anxiety, respectively”
The brain structure and genetic mechanisms underlying the nonlinear association between sleep duration, cognition and mental health
The effectiveness of circadian interventions through the blue light pineal gland serotonin->melatonin pathway is also very well established: daytime bright light therapy has long been known to be effective for depression, nighttime blue light reduction is now also recognized as important/effective, etc.
The interventions required to promote healthy sleep architecture are not especially expensive and are certainly not patentable, so they are in a blindspot for our current partially misaligned drug-product focused healthcare system. Of course there would be a market for a hypothetical drug which could target and fix the specific issues that some people have with sleep quality—but instead we just have hammers like benzos and lithium which cause as many or more problems than they solve.