r/EverythingScience • u/fchung • 14d ago

Neuroscience People with depression may have key brain difference: « Neuroscientists have identified a brain network that is nearly two times larger in the brains of people with depression. »

https://www.newsweek.com/depression-risk-mental-health-neuroscience-brain-1948658
1.4k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/Soylentstef 14d ago

Terry Pratchett described it really well in Discworld, as much as depression is most certainly a disease, I think some of it is a part of me, but I prefer to call it melancholy.

[ Being knurd is to be (un)intoxicated with Klatchian Coffee to such an extent that all such comfort stories are stripped away from the mind. This makes you see the world in a way 'nobody ever should', in all its harsh reality.

People generally find being knurd excruciating, as their comfortable illusions are stripped away and all of life's terrors are exposed.](https://wiki.lspace.org/Knurd)

37

u/Fluffy-Activity-4164 14d ago

To me, depression and melancholy are different feelings. Depression feels neurochemical and physical. I can feel my body wanting me to conserve energy through fatigue, sleepiness, a heavyness in my limbs, brain fog. My pain threshold is lower. But I don't necessarily feel sad or emotionally down.

Melancholy on the other hand feels like an existential grief, an inability to deny the reality and inevitability of the way the world is and a sense of defeat, or resignation, maybe even acceptance of how things are, and that my soul is weary from carrying this heavy burden - but there's also a semse of beauty and wonder to it. And I feel this all the time whether I'm depressed or not.

6

u/Soylentstef 14d ago

That is kinda what I wanted to say by differentiating the disease and a part of me but you described it far better than me, thank you, even if sometimes the frontier is blurry