Depression and VTA Projections

Dr. Chaudhury and Dr. Walsh brought together a team of researchers to come up with an astonishing research in the pathogenesis of depression. Through their studies of susceptibility (depression-like) phenotype vs. resilience to social-stress induced depression-like behavioral abnormalities, the team was able to bring forth the idea that the VTA-NAc pathway is “a key determinant of susceptibility”, but the VTA-mPFC pathway showed opposite results. This shows the intricate part the VTA dopamine neurons have when in comes to the adaptation of overactive stress and the role they play in developing depression-like behavioral abnormalities.

In an attempt to understand the paper more, I resorted to searching for other articles related to the paper given. I came across an article written by one of the researchers involved in the research mentioned above. Researcher Allyson Friedman, Ph.D., wrote a recent article about her work in understanding how individuals react to stress, while others end up submitting to depression. In her article she mentioned how 20% of people with depression are not helped by the usage of antidepressant and psychotherapy and how some individuals would employ coping mechanisms, which are linked to the function of the mesolimbic reward neural circuitry, which was mentioned in the paper above as VTA-NAc pathway. This can hopefully help us better understand the track depression takes with those who use these coping mechanisms. But then again I would imagine studying coping mechanisms by using rodents wouldn’t be very promising.

Dr. Friedman also mentioned how her work would bring forth a novel therapeutic strategy when it comes to the treatment of depression. She proposes that further activating of neuron firing that is found in depression with induced stress, can open up a way to “mimic and promote natural resilience”. According to her, if an antidepressant can enhance coping ability and resilience by pushing depressed individuals past the critical point, which she believes it can work as a naturally acting antidepressant.

I guess we will have to keep an eye at Dr. Friedman as she attempt, and hopefully succeed in developing naturally acting antidepressants.

Reference:

Friedman, Allyson. “Jump-starting natural resilience reverses stress susceptibility” Science 31 October 2014: 346 (6209), 555: n. pag. Web. 30 January 2015. https://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6209/555.1.full