Topic: depression-like behaviors

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a highly disabling psychiatric syndrome affecting many aspects of behavior and cognitive functions, including memory. MDD is strongly associated with stress and with deficits in specific subpopulations of GABAergic interneurons. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms linking these observations are not fully understood. The activity-regulated gene Arc/Arg3.1 is rapidly up-regulated by acquiring novel experience, learning and memory, and synaptic plasticity-inducing stimuli1,2. Acute stress has also been reported to elevate the levels of Arc/Arg3.1 mRNA o

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by alternating manic/hypomanic and depressive episodes. However, the molecular mechanism of transition between both states is unknown yet. Our study reveals that knockdown of the circadian clock gene Per2 in the hippocampal CA1 induces mania-like behaviors in rats. In contrast, overexpression of Per2 in the same region results in depression-like behaviors, indicating that Per2 expression levels may mediate the manic/depressive phenotype switch. In addition, we found that phosphorylation of the transcriptional factor CREB regu

Overgeneralization of negative memories is a cognitive feature and predisposing factor for depression. Variable aversive events promote both memory overgeneralization and depression. However, the underlying mechanisms connecting memory generalization to depression remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that mice that undergo two contextual fear conditionings (CFC) in altered, but not the same context, exhibit generalization of fear memories and depression-like behaviors. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to bed nucleus of the stria terminals (BNST) projection promotes both memory generalizatio