alexch's almanac

"It turned out that Parkinson’s — a brain disorder — was caused by a deficiency of a chemical in the brain called dopamine. This discovery influenced the way scientists thought about depression. “There is no doubt in my mind that the Parkinson’s story had a strong impact on the way that people were thinking about depression,” Frazer says. “It became easy to speculate that depression was due to a deficiency.” The question, of course, was what was deficient? Which chemical was too low? For decades researchers argued this question, but no one candidate took the lead. And then came Prozac."