Li et al

Between the two papers this week, I thought that the Li et al paper was a lot more easy to read than the Pollak et al paper. I think that Li et al did a decent job of organizing the sections and making everything pretty straightforward while Pollak et al's figures weren't always the most clear and there seemed to be a lot more going on. 

There were two things that I specifically appreciated about how the Li paper was written. One was that at the end, they made sure to include possibilities for future experiments as well as what was currently being researched. Second, they were careful in acknowledging that some of their findings may be explained by alternate mechanisms than currently proposed.  

Obviously, this paper is not perfect. First, I was expecting for Li et al to speak more about the significance (if any) in the differentials within levels of atrophy in regards to the distal and proximal spinal tufts. I don't feel like they spoke about the reasons why they looked at both areas instead of one or the other. Also, it didn't seem like there were any shocking or provocative findings or techniques. That's not necessarily what makes a good paper, but this series of experiments seemed a little stiff. It was interesting but I got the feeling like this was more of just a verification step as opposed to a more advanced experimental step. 

My overall impression of the Li et al study is that with this knowledge further things can be done. It's definitely beneficial to be able to visualize and confirm the suspected physiological effects of things like stress in order to better understand depression, but the types of experiments in which this is done seem to be more about verifying biological and chemical changes. I suppose that this must be done first to then be able to better understand why they happen and then to eventually come up with ways to combat them (now from different angles).