光遗传学技术对抑郁症的研究应用

光遗传学(optogenetics)技术是近年来快速发展的一项生物工程技术,可以对神经元进行精确控制。本文就现有抑郁症治疗的不足做了分析与总结,介绍了光遗传学技术在抑郁症研究应用方面的新进展,提出抑郁症相关行为表现与VTA多巴胺神经元的放电模式、投射通路的特异性、压力类型和压力严重程度之间存在相关联系。

Applications of optogenetics technology for depression

Optogenetics technology is a biological engineering technology developed in recent years. It uses a combination of techniques from optics and genetics to control the activity of individual neurons in living tissue, even within freely moving animals, and to precisely measure the effects of those manipulations in real-time. This article analyzed and summarized the lack of existing methods of treatment for depression, and introduce that optogenetics can be applied in the research of depression. We took advantage of the temporal precision and cell type of optogenet-ics to show that depression-related behaviors are related to firing patterns of dopamine neurons, projection-pathway specificity, pressure type and the stress severity.