Epidemiological sex differences in anxiety disorders and major depression are well
characterized. Yet the circuits and mechanisms that contribute to these differences are …

Dopamine regulates reward-related behavior through the mesolimbic dopaminergic
pathway. Stress affects dopamine levels and dopaminergic neuronal activity in the …

Light exerts a range of powerful biological effects beyond image vision, including mood and
learning regulation. While the source of photic information affecting mood and cognitive …

The elderly population is growing worldwide, with important health and socioeconomic
implications. Clinical and experimental studies on aging have uncovered numerous …

The mesocorticolimbic pathway is canonically known as the" reward pathway." Embedded
within the center of this circuit is the striatum, a massive and complex network hub that …

Major depressive disorder is a devastating psychiatric disease that afflicts up to 17% of the
world's population. Postmortem brain analyses and imaging studies of patients with …

Endocannabinoids (eCBs) are a family of lipid molecules that act as key regulators of
synaptic transmission and plasticity. They are synthetized “on demand” following …

Microglia are activated in many neurological diseases and have been suggested to play an
important role in the development of affective disorders including major depression. To …

How do brain systems evaluate the affective valence of a stimulus—that is, its quality of
being good or bad? One possibility is that a neural subsystem, or 'module'(such as a …

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is clearly implicated in reward processing and drug
addiction, as well as in numerous neurological and psychiatric disorders; nevertheless, the …