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by raducu 3039 days ago
I see, my intuition is that the brain is like a very complex analog amplifying station with different types of transistors, capacitors, resistors, whatever.

Drug A decreases 100ohm resistor values to 50 in a noise filter stage and "fixes" your problem with the radio.

Drug B has same 100ohm -> 50ohm effect, but in a different section of the radio and doesn't work.

Drug C increases the speaker resistance from 5ohm -> 10ohm and "fixes" your problem because you simply cannot hear the noise.

Drug D increases the microphone resistance from 5ohm -> 10ohm and the noise simply is not picked up.

Drugs A and B work the same way, drug C and D work the same way, but opposite to how drugs A and B work and they all provide the same net effect as far as I'm concerned.

1 comments

This is a good analogy, because there are a lot of different biochemical pathways that can play roles in mental health. To add add to that, here's a good image of 4 of the ways a drug can effect activity at certain sites (not mental health specific, general pharmacology principles): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inverse_agonist_3.sv...