Research Progress on Neural Circuit Mechanisms of Depression

School of Integrative Medicine, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China

^* E-mail: gongwx.wrlog5629@gmail.com

Abstract

Depression is one of the most prevailing neurological and psychotic disorders with a high rate of mental disability. The depression is closely related to the abnormality of neural circuits in brain. As a result, it is of great significance to make a profound study of the neural circuit of depression for revealing new clinical therapies of depression. Currently, neural circuits about depression have not been fully understood and there are still many difficulties puzzling researchers. While with the processing effort of neuroscientists and the development of electrophysiology, epigenetics or neuroimmunology, great progresses have been made in studies about neuronal circuits in depression to some extent. In this paper, we discuss various brain areas those are related to depression including the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens (NAc) and dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), and then put emphasis on their local function with different neurotransmitters and abnormality of neural circuits of depression by reviewing previous studies. In a way, figuring out the mechanism of depression can improve the cure rate, and reduce the economic loss due to depression around the world.