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Abstract:

Clinical depression is considered to be one of the most prevalent psychopathologies that may affect up to 20% of our active population at some point in life. DSM-IV criteria include pathognomonic symptoms of depressed mood and loss of interest (including anhedonia) as well as various cognitive changes (e.g. changes in cognitive flexibility) that may also contribute to intractability and relapse of the disorder. Cognitive flexibility describes the ability to evaluate infomation and adapt to situational changes. Memory generalisation (integrating information in clusters) and discrimination (separating information from clusters) are processes that involve flexibility of memnotic processes and are affected in clinical depression. We were comparing 2 inbred mouse strains (C57BL/6J and DBA2) that differ in their sensitivity to 5HT, NA and DA ligands, and evaluated their biological response to depression-inducing unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS) in behavioral (depression like and cognitive) , anatomical and molecular readouts.