Li et al

            I find it interesting that the Li study uses rats, whereas the Pollak study uses mice. Neither study goes into much detail about why they chose that particular animal, but I would be interested to see why one would be better or easier to use than the other. I would imagine they would be similar, but do no know enough about each one’s behavior patterns to say for sure. Another interesting comparison is the interventions that these two studies were using. Pollak was using behavioral changes, whereas Li was using antidepressants. It was particularly interesting that when comparing the sucrose preference tests, we find that there was no significant effect of the learned safety behavior in the Pollak study, but there was a significant difference for both types of antidepressants that were tested in the Li’s study. Another interesting difference is the region of the brain each study targets, as Li talks about the prefrontal cortex, but the Pollak study talks about the amygdala. Because the amygdala is associated with fear response, and the Pollak study was working with fear and learned safety, it would make sense that they expected changes there. The same goes for the Li article, because the prefrontal cortex is where they have found changes from these antidepressants in the past. The interesting thing when comparing these two articles, though, is that these are two very different pathways that result in the same effect, which involves depression and stress. This suggests multiple causes of the same symptoms, which would also require multiple treatment options.