Posted by zeugma on May 7, 2004, at 22:46:01
In reply to Re: ok, here's what my pdoc said, posted by harryp on May 7, 2004, at 22:27:51
Yes, I have a diagram of the amine systems and norepinephrine is integral to sleep cycles- the neurons in locus coeruleus must stop firing when REM state is entered. About 15 years ago when I was an undergraduate the effect of AD's on REM was stressed as a possible mechanism by which the drugs worked on mood- i wrote a paper on how 'endogeneous' vs. 'reactive' depression could be differentiated by REM abnormalities associated with the former but not the latter, and endogenous depression was basically what TCA's were supposed to fix. That was at the tail end of the TCA era, and I think research was mostly abandoned with the advent of SSRI's, since SSRI's have very different (and I believe deleterious, but that is the subject for an entire book, "The Dream Drugstore" by J.Allan Hobson) effects on the sleep/wake cycle.
When he brought up the brainstem vs. frontal lobe speculation, I suppose it awed me too a little, at how little we know even about drugs as old as the TCA's.
poster:zeugma
thread:343353
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040505/msgs/344607.html