Depression affects more than 120 million people world wide (according to the World Health Organization), and the cost of treatment is estimated at 30 billion dollars each year. At this year’s SfN meeting in San Diego, Dr. Herwig Baier presented some very interesting findings:

Dr. Baier and his team found that disrupting the stress response in zebrafish can generate behavioral phenotypes that resemble behaviors characteristic to depression. His work suggests that depression could be linked to a individual’s ability to cope with stress.

The zebrafish displaying depression-like behaviors carried a mutation in the glucocorticoid receptor gene, which is involved in stress management. However, the depression-like behaviors were ameliorated when the fish were given Prozac.

New therapies might be able to play into the activity of the glucocorticoid receptor, and promoting its activity instead of blocking it.

The Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting is being held in Chicago this year, and yesterday it kicked off with over 29.000 attendees. Most likely, the total number of neuroscientists working on all areas of the brain will climb to over 30.000 over the next few days.

The conference kicked off with a wonderful, and rather unexpected dialogue between Neuroscience and Society: “Magic, the Brain, and the Mind”. Real magicians took the stage, and wowed the audience with their extraordinary ability to fool our minds and divert our attention. Apollo Robbins, and Eric Mead took the stage, and our attention, away from some of the excellent “hard science” being discussed at this meeting as well.

An entertaining start for sure, and got us focused on the fact that there is still a lot about the brain, consciousness, and awareness, that we need to explore.

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