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Treatment with currently available antidepressants, which act on catechol and monoamine neurotransmitters, has yielded variable outcomes, leading to studies of medications (e.g., ketamine, tianeptine) acting via other mechanisms, such as glutaminergic pathways. These investigators studied the role of β-catenin pathways in genetic–environmental interactions that produce depressive behaviors in mice; β-catenin is a protein regulating gene transcription.
The mice underwent procedures to enhance β-catenin in the nucleus accumbens (NAc); controls received an inert vehicle. All mice experienced an experimental paradigm of social-defeat stress. Mice without β-catenin enrichment developed social avoidance and depressive and anxious behaviors (on the…