Why the thrill is gone: Scientists identify potential target for treating major system of depression
BY BRUCE GOLDMAN
JULY 11, 2012
Excerpt: “This hormone, melanocortin, signals to an ancient and almost universal apparatus deep in the brain called the reward circuit, which has evolved to guide animals toward resources, behaviors and environments — such as food, sex and warmth — that enhance their prospects for survival.”
My comment to the medicalxpress site:
The study design and results attest to the efficacy of incorporating the perspective provided in the FDA Critical Path Initiative (for development of therapeutic drugs). Finally, someone else looks at the gene, cell, tissue, organ, organ system pathway that links sensory input to hormones and their effects on behavior.
How could they have missed the more obvious connection to the interaction among the gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH)neuronal system, luteinizing hormone, and melanocortin?
This is but one of many studies that link the epigenetic effects of nutrient chemicals and pheromones to adaptive evolution via classically conditioned behaviors directly linked from olfactory/pheromonal input to brain development and plasticity altered by stress. One need only look at how glucose alters hypothalamic GnRH pulse frequency to be clued in to how nutrient chemicals, stress, and social encounters regulate neuroendocrine and neuroimmune system function — with melanocortin CORRELATES.
My comments to the psychiatry-research yahoo group: If you read the article and it is not clear why I have attempted to differentiate between Glen Sizemore’s ridiculous approach to potentially effective treatment regimens, and the required biologically based approach, you should abandon hope of ever understanding the foundations of all behavior.
It’s not training, as I think Glen would still like you to believe. If you understand nothing else about this study, it should still be clear that behavior is receptor-mediated, and that no “training receptors” were considered in the study design. That means the behaviorists can now close up shop and attempt to find productive work, perhaps as lab assistants in facilities that research biologically based behavior.
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.