"The tested for depression using a standard swim test method, which basically works by dropping the rodents into a container of water and measuring how long they frantically splash around to try to get out. Depressed mice give up more quickly."
I don't know if that is the best unit test.
maybe there muscles are just weaker? maybe there muscles are weaker because they are depressed, or they are depressed because their muscles are weak
No, Interleukine 1 causes depression-like symptoms in normal mice (they give up sooner), but not in mice KO for the IL-1 receptor in the blood-brain barrier.
Reading this article about the various ways "scientists" tortured mice in order to draw completely meaningless, subjective conclusions about nothing makes me depressed.
These "scientists" try to understand depression in order to help people. If you do not want that you do not have to take the mediciation. Contrarily, I would. And that you call this torture is a simple case of you mocking every person who has ever been really tortured. These experiment are undertaken with extrem precaution and after a paper trail that can be measured in trees. On the other hands, mice that are killed by pesticides usually die of internal bleeding. That is torture.
Or the millions of mice that find their way into the blades of combines in wheat and corn fields...
The idea that it's a useful model of depression is more conjecture than anything else. I think at this point it's mostly used for the sake of comparison with all the other experiments that used it.
Yeah, it seems like you could more reasonably conclude from a failed swim test that a mouse was tired, not depressed. So isn't an equally valid conclusion just that the illness-induced cytokine-blocking makes you feel tired?
That doesn't seem as interesting! We all know that when we're sick, we often feel tired.
This could also help explain chronic fatigue syndrome -- most cases seem to occur after a viral infection.
Arguments for/against the process aside, I could see this as a result of evolution. Tribes who's members remained social while sick would be more likely to spread disease and self-destruct?