Jones I H, Stoddart D M, Mallick J
Department of Psychiatry, University of Tasmania, Australia.
Br J Psychiatry. 1995 Apr;166(4):475-9. doi: 10.1192/bjp.166.4.475.
This is a sociobiological approach to depression using hierarchy and its hypothesised relevance to self-esteem in the marsupial sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps).
Differential access to resources between the dominant and submissive animal is measured by observation in four stable colonies. The dominant animals from two of these colonies are then introduced into the other two, resulting in the transferred former dominants becoming subordinate. Behavioural and biochemical measures relevant to depression and involving access to resources are then repeated. These measures include eating, drinking, social and sexual access, motility, grooming and biochemical estimates of cortisol and testosterone.
Subordinate animals have significantly less access to resources, both in the stable colony and when the formerly dominant animals become subordinate.
A sociobiological approach using a hierarchy model equating resource-holding potential with self-esteem, exemplified by this study, may provide new concepts and insights into the phenomenology and pathophysiology of depression. It allows comparisons to be made between animal behaviour and cognition: the lack of such has been a major difficulty in animal studies hitherto. The findings are possibly more relevant to dysthymia than to affective disorder and imply a relationship between low resource-holding potential in sub-human animals as a phylogenetic antecedent of some of the cognitive and affective aspects of depression in man.
这是一种关于抑郁症的社会生物学研究方法，运用等级制度及其与有袋动物蜜袋鼯（Petaurus breviceps）自尊的假设相关性进行研究。
通过对四个稳定群落的观察，测量优势动物和从属动物获取资源的差异。然后将其中两个群落的优势动物引入另外两个群落，导致被转移的原优势动物变为从属地位。接着重复进行与抑郁症相关且涉及资源获取的行为和生化测量。这些测量包括饮食、饮水、社交和性接触、活动能力、梳理毛发以及皮质醇和睾酮的生化评估。
无论是在稳定群落中，还是当原优势动物变为从属地位时，从属动物获取资源的机会都显著减少。
以本研究为例，采用将资源持有潜力等同于自尊的等级模型的社会生物学研究方法，可能为抑郁症的现象学和病理生理学提供新的概念和见解。它使得动物行为与认知之间能够进行比较：而缺乏这种比较一直是迄今为止动物研究中的一个主要难题。这些发现可能与心境恶劣障碍的相关性比与情感障碍的相关性更大，并且暗示了低等动物中低资源持有潜力作为人类抑郁症某些认知和情感方面的系统发育前身之间的关系。
