Merson Lecture 2023: The neurobiology of depression

Depression is a common, chronic, and debilitating syndrome, which involves dysregulation throughout emotional centers in the brain. Our laboratory has focused on stable changes within these centers that control life-long vulnerability to different forms of stress and the induction of depression-related behavioral abnormalities in mouse model and human. A major finding are dramatic differences in the effects of stress and depression in males versus females, which suggests that depression may be a fundamentally distinct syndrome in the two sexes.