Researchers from the University of Maryland have conducted a series of experiments in mice and humans leading them to conclude that reduced gene expression in the reward center is linked to depression. Specifically, the researchers found that there was reduced expression of the Slc6a15 gene in the brains of people with major depression who committed suicide, and that expression of this …
Lithium Mechanism of Action
Understanding the lithium mechanism of action may allow us to predict which bipolar patients will respond to the medication (and which will not) and may shape our understanding of the causes of bipolar disorder itself. Research at the University of California, San Diego could lead to just these kind of breakthroughs in the next few years. In the first of …
Brain Response to Stress in Depression
A study looking at the brain response to stress in depression offers important clues about changes in brain function that may be associated with vulnerability to depression and what happens when a vulnerable individual becomes depressed. Researchers looked at brain activity using functional MRI in three groups of people: people with untreated first episode major depression, people with a history …
Negative Self-Appraisal and Brain Activity
Negative Self-Appraisal and Brain Activity: Altered Function in Depression Within the Default Mode Network (DMN) are three structures that link negative self-appraisal and brain activity: The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) And the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) Negative self-appraisal refers to the relentless critical self talk that occurs in many people with depression. Many patients report …
Depression Biology and Treatment
New research on depression biology and treatment highlights the rapid increase in knowledge in this area in the last decade. In this post we will summarize some of these research findings briefly. This brief tour will take us to a newly discovered protein that may be a vital link between stress and depression. A genome wide search for changes associated …
Depression Therapeutics and Mechanisms
The September 15, 2016 edition of Biological Psychiatry is devoted to updates in the area of psychobiology that relate to depression and its treatment. In this blog post I will summarize some of those studies to give you a sense of what is going on in the field. Some of these studies may not be replicated in follow-up research, but some …
A New Model of Anxiety and Fear
We often tell our patients that the treatment of anxiety is primarily through psychotherapy, in contrast to the treatment of mood disorders which is often based on medications or brain stimulation. In fact, it is one of the more frustrating aspects of psychiatry that there has been so little progress in terms of the biological treatments of anxiety and fear …
Why SSRIs May Increase Anxiety Short Term
SSRIs are among the most commonly prescribed medications for chronic anxiety, but not infrequently these medications may be associated with a short term increase in symptoms that precedes the long term benefit. In an elegant series of studies published online in late August 2016 in the premier scientific journal, Nature, researchers from the NIH and the University of North Carolina at …
Antidepressants Alter Gene Expression
An interesting study looked at similarities and differences in the effects of two medications that have anti-depressant effects and yet are extremely different in terms of how they work: ketamine and imipramine (a tricyclic antidepressant). This industry supported study looked at the effects of these two agents on a reward circuit (involving the prefrontal cortex (PFC), nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, and amygdala – …
Genetics of bipolar disorder – update
Unraveling the genetics of bipolar disorder has been a much more complicated task than anyone thought. Although the best estimates suggest that genetic factors account for the very high percentage of the risk of developing bipolar, with an estimated an estimated 0.7 to 0.8 heritability (Sullivan), it has been remarkably difficult to find genes with significant individual effects that are replicated …
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