Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Depression is a major health issue, but we lack long-term effective treatment. This is partly due to our limited understanding of the disease biology. Recent research suggests that depression patients show abnormalities in interactions between brain regions that can in turn serve as useful indicators for identifying individuals susceptible to the disease. In particular, changes in interactions between hippocampus and amygdala, two regions critical for processing emotional information in the brain, can be used to predict patients' variation in mood. The goal of my postdoctoral research is to explore the mechanisms and neural circuits underlying changes in hippocampal-amygdala interactions in the depressed population. Specifically, I will identify the cells and circuits underpinning hippocampal-amygdala interactions that track with mood and examine how they are altered in population susceptible to depression. In addition, I will test how we can manipulate the neural circuit to reduce susceptibility. The findings will give new insight into the mechanisms by which depression alters the processing of emotional information in the brain and should inspire novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the disease.