Study of learning, memory and hippocampal functions during anhedonia in mice

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Tatyana Strekalova
• Subject Area: Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: from 2004 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5420102

Depression is a mental illness, the core feature of which is anhedonia, a decreased ability to experience pleasures. Depression is also characterized by cognitive abnormalities, though their relation with anhedonia have not so far been analyzed in detail. Little is known, the impairment of which type(s) of memory (hippocampus-dependent, instrumental) and of which stage(s) of learning process (acquisition, consolidation, recall) are characteristic for the anhedonic status. The biological basis of depression remains unclear as well. The available data point to the importance of hippocampal formation as a brain structure involved in pathogenesis of depressive disorders. Lesions of the dentate gyrus lead to anhedonia in rats; animals with experimentally induced "depressive" status have shown decreased long-term potentiation (LTP) in the dentate gyrus. We hypothesize that both memory deficits and anhedonia have common underlying neurobiological basis, including changed neuronal plasticity in the hippocampal formation. Here, we plan to study the impairment of which forms and stages of learning correlates with anhedonia in mice, whether hippocampus is involved to anhedonia-related memory deficits and whether those deficits can be restored by antidepressant treatment. We will employ chronic stress procedure that induces anhedonia in majority but not entire population of C57BL/6N mice and will compare anhedonic, non-anhedonic, non-stressed and antidepressant-treated mice in a battery of memory tests. In addition, hippocampal function in relation to anhedonia and antidepressant treatment will be assessed using electrophysiological recordings in CA1 area in dentate gyrus of hippocampal formation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Dusan Bartsch