A mouse that's uninterested in new foods and tasty drinks and easily despairs in a challenging situation has more than a case of the blues. This is a strain of mouse created by Jason Snyder and his colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health to model human depression. To bring on the mouse's symptoms, all that was necessary was to stop one part of its brain from creating new cells.
The researchers wanted to investigate the link between depression and the brain's ability to grow new neurons, called neurogenesis. Most of your brain cells are born before you are, but new neurons also appear throughout adulthood. One of the main sites of their creation is in the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory and navigation. The hippocampus is one of the first regions ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. It's also home to a high concentration of stress hormone receptors, making it especially sensitive to their effects.
