> From:          "J. R. Bruman" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:       Depression And PD
   Hi Joe
  I agree with the general thrust of what you are saying . I often
refer to my l-dopa as my happy tablets ( when my dyskinesia is not
too bad ) . I have often had too stop my drug holiday because of an
overwhelming sense of dread and not because of any physical impairment .
I am a dopamine junky and find it very difficult to do without my fix
and unfortunately the amount needed increases all the time as the
effectiveness decreases . The beggining of dose and end of dose
dyskinesia also increase with increase drug dosage . Knowing that I
am emotionaly as well as physically dependent contributes to
depression .
. For example rats, accustomed to getting
> nicotine and then deprived of it, worked until the stimulation
> intensity reached a certain value known as the threshold value,
> that measured the degree of addiction.
Nicotine increases the dopamine in the brain as well as depressing the
MAO B

 Over the years, workers
> have also learned that a major component of the brain reward
> system is a small group of nerve cells that project from the
> deep midbrain to a ventral forebrain region called the nucleus
> accumbens, and that use dopamine as their chemical messenger.
> Enhanced dopamine transmission in this system seems to be
> intricately involved with the sensation of pleasure, so it is
> sometimes called "the reward pathway". And by analogy, a
> similar pleasure pathway is thought to exist in people.
>
> Recently, workers have found a way to observe the relation of
> dopamine to the reward pathway in human subjects. Using
> positron emission tomography (PET) scan imaging, and a tracer
> that is displaced from receptors by dopamine, they could
> map the release of dopamine as a function of the subject's
> behavior. The volunteers played a video game while being
> scanned, and were offered additional money as a bonus for
> "winning" the game. The pleasure of earning the prize was
> thus correlated to the release of dopamine. Note, while PWP
> have always known that dopamine affects behavior, this is
> the first observation of the converse, that behavior affects
> dopamine. Might the causes of PD possibly include a behavioral
> factor?
I have always believed that trauma , both physical and emotional can
cause PD . That mental stimulation can inprove PD symptoms has been known
about for a long time . There is this character in Dr. Sachs book "
The Awackenings" in which one of the PDsufferers is nicknamed "Pele "
because with a football he losses a lot of his mobility impairement
and can play football . This raises the question that I have been
toying with over the last few weeks . Could it be that we have got PD
all wrong ? It is not a lack of dopamine that is causing a change in
the neural firing pattern . But rather  a change in the neural firing
pattern using less dopamine circuits . This lessens the dopamine
requirement leading to a dieing off dopamine producing cells . Making
the brains concentration of dopamine unnaturally high will  boost
these underused dopamine based neural paths and will tend to normalise normalise the
neural firing pattern . ( I am still at the stage of testing this
idea with data )
 In some ways I feel maybe I was a dopamine junky all my life . I was
not into chemical stimulants but rather mental ones . I was fighting
off depression with a continual series of new wierd projects that I
could get excited about .I fully agree with the idea of a strong
connection between mental stimulation , dopamine and depression .

> Depression = Lack Of Pleasure = (sometimes) Lack Of Dopamine.
>
>. The notion might be verified eventually by
> collecting a body of data from postmortem examination of
> "depressed" PD patients.
I am very sceptical of using postmortem examinatios as they do not
show the living brain neural firing pattern . At best they show a
very conplicated neural circuitry . Without being certain of how the
cicuitry works completley, predictions ot outcomes of neural
fireing pattern is inpossible .
>
> Bottom Line, for People With Parkinson's Plus Depression: If
> Prozac doesn't work for you, maybe all you need is a bit more
> of your usual PD medication. Ask your doctor. Cheers,
> Joe
 You are right but feeding my dopamine habit with more L-dopa
increases my dyskinesia .This in itself is very depressing .
     peace
          Alastair     ( [log in to unmask] )