Testing The Mood @ Newmood.co.uk

Published: Friday, September 02, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

TESTING THE BLUES

Self-diagnose your state of mind...and maybe win a little too!

Feeling depressed? Researchers at The University of Manchester in England are testing our genetic disposition to depression with a unique Internet test.

The website Newmood.co.uk is the place to go to see how vulnerable you are to depression by identifying the emotions on people's faces and taking a gambling test.

The research team aims to recruit more than 1000 UK volunteers for further tests as part of the five-year, EU-funded project titled rather catchily "NewMood - New Molecules in Mood Disorders." They have already discovered how anti-depressants such as Prozac can affect how the brain reacts to fearful faces and which parts of the brain react to fear.

Professor Bill Deakin explains: "Anxiety is a contagious emotion. When you see other people who are anxious, as a primate you feel anxious as well. Our brains are wired to see anxiety - it makes sure we are safe. This is a fascinating test and, during further testing, we will be able to see which parts of the brain light up, or work harder, when you see a fearful face. Depressed people are more likely to see sadness or fear in a neutral face.

"The gambling test, where volunteers choose from pairs of spinners to 'win' money, will show us which parts of the brain light up when you are working for a reward. Depressed people are less affected by reward and more likely to give up easily as the test goes on."

Volunteers for this research study will be asked to fill in a confidential questionnaire and provide a mouth swab for genetic analysis. The team will then compare the DNA with the questionnaire group data.

"Depression is a common trait like height or body build and, just like those, we suspect there are lots of genes involved. By measuring the important possible factors that can lead to a tendency to depression across a large number of individual people, we hope to find which ones act together to cause depression. Ultimately, this will help us to develop new ways of preventing and treating this illness."

Depression is a common illness affecting 10-20% of the population at some time in their life and is twice as common in women as in men. Treatment can be very effective, but may not help everyone. The causes of depression are a mixture of genetic tendency, personality factors, difficult circumstances and life experiences, and the big challenge is trying to understand how these work together to lead to depression.

The University of Manchester is leading 13 institutions in ten countries in the NewMood project. Four institutions are testing humans and each need 1000 volunteers. Those who take part in this study could win GBP 100 in a prize draw.