Seminar
Date | 2016-04-19 |
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The Spring Semester Seminar
■ Topic : Shining light on depressed brain: optogenetic rescue of depression in mice
■ Speaker : Prof. Daesoo Kim, (Dept. of Biological Sciences, KAIST)
■ Invitation : Prof. Keon Jae Lee
■ Date & Time : April 19 (Tue), 16:00
■ Venue : KAIST Applied Engineering B/D(W1), Multimedia Lecture Hall (1st Floor)
■ Abstract : In brain disorders, the
functional alteration of neural circuits leads to emotional and behavioral
symptoms that afflicts patients. Patients with depression or post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) show activity asymmetry between the two hemispheres of
medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).
However, how the hemispheric activity asymmetry cause emotional disorders
remains unclear. Here, we have revealed that the hemispheric asymmetry of mPFC
is found in stressed mice that show depression-like behaviors. Their left
hemisphere is depressed as measured by decreased neuronal firing. When the left
mPFC is optically stimulated, their depression-like behaviors disappear. In
resilient mice that show normal behaviors, the photoinhibition of left mPFC
induce depression-like behaviors. From the analysis of microarray data in each
mPFC hemispheres, we discovered that the genetic changes in the left cortices
determines the adaptive behavior upon social defeat stress. Evidenced together
with the neural activity, we conclude that the left mPFC plays a critical role
in emotional change by stress and this signals hope that we can cure depression
by modulating neural circuits using lights.