Does depression have uility? At first one might think no. After all, don't the depressed frequently neglect their own well-being, their relationships with others, and contemplate such serious acts as suicide? If so, how has depression—a condition with no obvious evolutionary utility—passed through thousands of generations to continue affecting human beings today?
From this logical predicament does Jonah Lehrer of the New York Times begin his attempt at arguing yes, depression does have utility. Entitled, “Depression’s Upside,” the piece describes how new research points toward a painful, albeit useful, function for depression. Following the work of Andy Thomas (psychiatrist of the University of Virginia) and Paul Andrews (Evolutionary Psychologist of Virginia Commonwealth University), Lehrer begins by focusing on the double-edged capacity of rumination, a “…thought process which defines [depression].”
Rumination typically means to physically chew something over and over again. In this case, however, it means a kind of mental chewing of ideas in a closed loop without interruption. One might characterize it as an intense form of focus. According to Leherer, “The capacity for intense focus …relies in large part on a brain area called the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is located a few inches behind the forehead.” In addition, “Several studies [have] found an increase in brain activity (as measured indirectly by blood flow) in the VLPFC of depressed patients.” Curiously, rumination tends to make our thinking more analytical, because it “…is largely rooted in working memory, a kind of mental scratchpad that allows us to ‘work’ with all the information stuck in consciousness.” It is for this reason Thomas and Andrews have called their idea the “analytic-rumination hypothesis.”
Even more strange perhaps, some research by Andrews found that after performing an abstract-reasoning test, “…nondepressed students showed an increase in ‘depressed affect...which made people think better.’” From this Lehrer suggests that “the anatomy of focus is inseparable from the anatomy of melancholy…that depressive disorder is an extreme form of an ordinary thought process, part of the dismal machinery that draws us toward our problems.” Accordingly, we have reason to believe that the capacity for extreme focus and abstract reasoning shares links with the capacity for unremitting negative thought.
This is interesting, because it suggests two-directional causation; that depression makes us more analytical, and analytical thinking makes us more depressed. How should we take this, particularly within the context of a world which places increasingly greater value on analytic skills and reasoning? On the one hand, analysis has arguably made us better off: we live longer, communicate more widely, and understand processes in the world more completely because of it. On the other hand, we've replaced many problems of the past with those of our own time, among them technology addiction, increasing narcissism, wide-spread obesity, and a seeming collapse of personal support structures within society generally. One may argue against any one of these claims, but the point is that while analysis has solved many problems and reduced the prevalence of many superstitions, it has produced many of its own as replacements. And if the research cited by Mr. Lehrer is any indication, a world preoccupied with analysis may in some respects be a sadder one. Analytic intelligence is but one kind, and while it has its benefits it also has its costs. Wisdom and intelligence often seem akin, but perhaps not synonymous.
"A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can." -Michel de Montaigne
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