Psychiatric Newspaper | Kyungsoo Woo Specialist, Department of Psychiatry
One day I looked up at the sky, The rising clouds and the sun hanging over the blue sky are dazzlingly beautiful, but have you ever frowned as if a storm was regarding to rage in the gray sky?
Probably, many of you have had the experience of being in a depressed mood from time to time. The problem is that the feeling of depression does not go away like the weather changes every day, and it enters into a long rainy season. The fact that there seems to be no promise of when this rain will stop or whether it will stop makes my heart heavier.
Unlike in the past, many people now have the misconception that depression is simply a matter of willpower or that negative thoughts are the cause. On the one hand, I feel fortunate that the public’s understanding of depression is getting deeper. However, increased understanding of depression does not solve everything. Depression still haunts us and makes our hearts hard. Even if you seem to have taken one step out of the swamp of depression, if you look at it once more, you are walking in place. But what is clear is that we will one day be able to break out of that swamp without fail.
When depression turns our lives into gray, it can be helpful to know more regarding what’s going on in our brains and what their brains are like right now. Our brains have ‘attentional circuits’ that determine what to pay attention to and what to ignore.There is. This attention circuit is influenced by the emotion circuit, and the emotion circuit is also influenced by the attention circuit. In a word, they influence each other.
Unfortunately, our emotional circuits are designed to be more easily activated by negative than by positive. among them Some people’s brains focus much more on the negative than the average person, which puts these people at greater risk for depression. And when you’re depressed, your brain’s negativity bias makes you perceive things even more negatively than they really are. It also turns out that when you’re in a bad mood, your brain’s negativity bias is exacerbated, which is called ‘mood congruent attentional bias’. It is said that the reason for this bias in mood attention is that the reactivity of the amygdala increases when you are in a bad mood.
Depressed people tend to pay more attention to negative events and emotions, as well as detect sadness among many, many world events.also stands out. also Feeling more pain with the same stimulusappeared as Because mood influences the perception of painno see. In addition, it was observed that the related brain activity increased not only when the pain was actually felt, but also when the pain was expected. In other words, depressed patients responded more physically and emotionally to the possibility of pain than non-depressed people, and had a higher percentage of thinking that it would come true.
Moreover, when presented with real pain stimuli, their amygdala activity increased significantly compared to normal people. Decreased activity in areas of the brain stem that produce endorphins to relieve painI did. In short, it has been scientifically proven that people with depression feel more pain than people without depression even with the same stimulation.
also When faced with an unpredictable or uncertain situation, the brain of a person with depression distorts its response, similar to when it perceives something negative.showed In other words, in an uncertain situation, worry activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and self-focused emotional processing in the medial prefrontal cortex increased, and the ‘unknown situation’ was accepted as a ‘bad situation’.
As such, it can be seen that in the brains of those who have been suffering from depression for a long time or are having a hard time with depression, the mechanism of a vicious cycle in which it is increasingly difficult to get out of depression is almost automatically activated. How can I get out of this swamp of depression?
Two Neurotransmitters Play a Key Role in Mitigating Negative Bias During DepressionThere is serotonin and norepinephrineno see. Studies examining the effectiveness of drugs that stimulate these two neurotransmitters found that following one week of taking them there was no appreciable increase in overall happiness, but both drugs increased attention to positive events and decreased attention to negative events. Dropping results were found. in other words, As the secretion of the two hormones increases, the negative bias decreases and the brain biases toward recognizing positive events.can know.
And naturally, ways to increase the secretion of these two hormones include exercising, getting a good night’s sleep, meditating and deep breathing. These methods are also commonly known methods that help us overcome depression in our lives.
Unfortunately, there is still no way to directly control the brain’s systems that respond spontaneously without our awareness. But we You can find out which biases you have by noticing how you react in certain situations. If you think regarding it objectively, it’s not really something to be upset regarding, but if you find yourself feeling overly upset or in a bad mood, ask yourself, ‘Why am I in such a bad mood?’ You can experience a little relief just by being aware of it. Because emotions and perceptions are mediated by different brain regions, This is because when you recognize your emotions or reactions, the prefrontal cortex is activated and it becomes possible to calm down the amygdala once more.no see.
In order to go one step further and overcome the negativity bias, It is important to strengthen the brain circuits responsible for optimismdo. among them First ‘To frequently think that good things can happen in the future.alone can help. This is because if you repeat a positive image, the ventral anterior cingulate cortex of the brain is activated and helps control the negative bias in the brain by helping to regulate the amygdala.
The second is not only imagining positive events, but also expecting them to happen.It is a way to strengthen the optimism circuit by activating the prefrontal region that helps control the amygdala when doing it.
Of course, it is not easy for depressed people to get out of the blanket right away and exercise, meditate, or repeat positive imaginations. Still, as the saying goes, the cause and treatment of depression are related to brain dysfunction and various neurotransmitters, so understanding what happens in our brain when depressed is definitely helpful in overcoming depression. will be If you try little by little to get out of the swamp of depression, the day will come when you can feel the blue sky once more following the long rainy season of depression.
Gangnam Forest Department of Mental Health Clinic | Kyungsoo Woo Director
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references
1. Vuilleumier, P. (2005). How brains beware: Neural mechanisms of emotional attention.
2. Strigo, I. A., Simmons, A. N., et al. (2008). Association of major depressive disorder with altered functional brain response during anticipation and processing of heat pain.
3. Holzel, B. K., Hoge, E. A., et al. (2013). Neural mechanisms of symptom improvements in generalized anxiety disorder following mindfulness training.
