Week 1: Bessa vs. Santarelli

The Santarelli paper was interesting due to the fact that they proposed a hypothesis and seemed to do whatever it took to affirm that hypothesis without considering other options. They propose that hippocampal neurogenesis is the underlying mechanism through which antidepressants mediate depression. While reading the abstract, one might expect that the researchers would then follow logical experimental thinking and inhibit the process which they believe leads to the desired effect and see if this effect still occurs. This is not the case though. Instead, they spend the entire paper harping on the point that neurogenesis occurs in the mice when they are given the drugs. While this may be the case, I was skeptical while reading the paper because their experiments do not really allow for the implication of causality between neurogenesis and the behavioral effects of antidepressants. Instead their data implies association which I do not think is enough to prove their hypothesis.

The Bessa paper does what I wanted the Santarelli paper to do. They inhibit neurogenesis through the introduction of methylazoxymethanol, MAM, which arrests neurogenesis. This, to me is a better way to go about it, although it is important to note that this was obviously the clear cut approach for them, as they set out to disprove the findings of the Santarelli paper in the first place. My point is, Santarelli and co. should have done something similar in the first place in order to come to a conclusion of either eliminating hippocampal neurogenesis as the underlying mechanism or leaving it in play. I say ‘leaving it in play’ as opposed to ‘affirming’ per se, because that is basically what both papers do. One says neurogenesis is the cause but doesn’t fully convince me and the other says neurogenesis is not the cause (and has a better approach to proving this) but doesn’t prove this either. Both of these papers were good examples of what I like to call wishy washy science.