Grant: Operating Grant

Major depression is a serious disease that profoundly affects the lives of those who are afflicted. It is estimated that about 8-12% of Canadians will suffer from an episode of major depression during their lives and that approximately 5% of all Canadians will suffer from the disease at any one point. The emotional, societal and economic burden of the disease for the Canadian society is enormous. Although modern antidepressant therapy provide much welcomed therapeutic benefits, they are unfortunately plagued by a lack of efficacy in a high proportion of patients and by a delay in their clinical actions. Beyond the obvious distressing nature of this delay for patients, antidepressant therapy may also be associated with increases in suicidal behavior early in the treatment, especially in adolescent populations. Thus, there is an urgent need to design more effective and faster-acting antidepressant therapies. In this proposal, we propose to take advantage of recent technical developments that allows gaining a better understanding of how specific brain networks are functioning. Specifically, we will study with high precision how specific brain networks are affected in a model of depression, importantly, how their activity can be specifically modulated. These studies will significantly improve our current understanding of this debilitating disease and provide a rich framework that will contribute to the development of new and novel therapeutic strategies.