Yet Another Article of Note

Click on the headline for this very good article in the New York Times. Severely depressed patients, many of them suicidal, can be successfully treated by pinpoint brain stimulation. This points to, again, the biological basis for many depressions and for many suicides, especially later life suicides. Any why not? Intuitively this makes tremendous sense.

When I was growing up our teachers would tell us that as a species we were built for about 40 years. Only in the last few thousand years has the population ever reached such extended life durations. The human body is complex beyond belief, and we know that for every advantage, there is a cost. For instance, a particular beetle grows a horn, and those with the longest horns are selected for reproductive success. But when researchers intervened to created even larger horns, well those beetles suffered from diminished brain size. Perhaps our trade-off has been longevity vs reliability. For our bodily systems to work reliably, the sacrifice turned out to be errors that showed up later: cancers. Brain malfunctions.

Everybody has a mid-life crisis. Why? What is it? Those questions are answered but stepping back and seeing the big picture. Once you hit 40, you just aren't as valuable as you used to be. And that's the way it is.