Topic: antidepressant drugs

Antidepressant drugs are beneficial for many of the symptoms of depression, but impairments in reward and motivation often remain or become worse. The effort-based foraging (EBF) and the effort-for-reward (EfR) tasks target different aspects of reward processing and motivation. This study investigated the effects of different antidepressants on effort-related decision-making (EfR) and motivation to engage with natural foraging (EBF). 2 cohorts of 16 and 24 C57bl/6J male mice were used in fully randomised, counterbalanced within-subject designs for acute pharmacological studies (escitalopram, v

The dentate gyrus (DG) of the ventral hippocampus is a key hub critical for the responses to prolonged chronic stress and antidepressant drugs, including the antidepressant candidate acetyl-L-carnitine (LAC). Prior studies from our and other laboratories showed transcriptome-wide signatures in this brain area with robust changes in genes important for neuronal plasticity, including the metabotropic glutamate receptor-2 (mGlu2), and insulin signaling pathways after chronic stress, and that these changes are ameliorated by short-term administration of LAC. Here, we used 10X Genomics droplet-base