RE: This is what depression is made of! - The biological underpinnings of depression
There are many different pathways that can lead us to depression, and I like the way you addressed how our neurobiology can be one them @sienceblocks.
The changes in dendritic spines seen in animal models you brought up here reminded me of a study I came across a while ago by Mitra and Sapolky (2008), who injected high doses of corticosterone in rats for one day to represent intense stress. After 12 days they saw that the rats had sprouted more dendrites in their amygdala neurons than the controls. This was sufficient to produce long-term anxiety and depressive behaviour. Which leads me to take into consideration the influence the social-environment might play in also giving rise to the condition discussed.
Thank you for sharing this post with us. I was looking forward to it and it has been an interesting read. Now, I am going to look into Nie et al's study. As of late, I have been going through materials that explore the association between mental-illnesses and inflammation :) as I mentioned to you before.
All the best to you :)
Take care!
Oh Spolsky's paper, I remember citing that in my Rotation project back in 2012. I was trying to understand, the effect of traumatic stress on pre existing and post trauma fear memories. For most part of my rotation I kept thinking that corticosteroids are immune suppressants. So I might have imagined that effect of corticosteroids on neurons regulate dendritic spines while it's suppression of immune system makes us more prone to diseases. But then new evidence emerged, esp in its relation to microglial cells. It appears that whether it activates the immune fiction or suppress it there depends on its dose, timing and duration. So here is an added line of inflammation, stress endocrinology and psychiatric diseases that may interest you. I think there is a lot in this field to talk about.
And once again thanks for stopping by , reading and appreciating.