Week 2

My initial reaction towards Chadhury’s paper was confusion. I’m not sure whether it was format, vocabulary or style, but I had a very hard time following the goals of the paper and how each experiment served a greater purpose in the hypothesis. Because the methods were separate from the body of the paper, it was unclear what certain terms were (social-defeat stress paradigm, resilient versus susceptible, etc.). After reading into the methods section and picking up on context clues, I eventually picked up on these definitions. However, I would have preferred Chadhury providing brief explanations for what the experiment and result vocabulary meant, so that I could interpret the data and not worry about picking up definitions.

The clear and direct style of Tye et al. was an apparent change from Chadhury. Because this paper was clearer in the purpose of each experiment, I feel more inclined to agree with these conclusions. Although the methods were not explicitly stated, Tye thoroughly explained each experimental group, procedure and most importantly, the reasoning behind each one. I also found the figures in this article to be superior to those of Chadhury’s. By showing the time during which light was added, the direct effect on the behavioral changes is more apparent. This further supports the immediate effect that Chadhury was referring to but did not show in his figures.

Finally, one of the sections I found most impactful was the closing paragraph Tye’s paper. In it, he mentioned that the whole process is exceeding complex and that by understanding this circuit, this by no means concludes the understanding of depression and antidepressant mechanisms. I admire that the author acknowledges that the model should be “interpreted with caution” because it may not be applicable to the all human models of depression. Overall, Tye provided more context as to why we were studying this circuit and how their conclusions fit into the overall story of depression.