Depression: Abnormality in Neural Circuits

Depression as a kind of mental illness affects huge number of population worldwide and is ranked as the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide, and is predicted to increase to the second place by 2020. Depression leads to great social burden because of its substantial impairment and disability in everyday activities. Though great efforts in previous decades have been made to understand this mental disease, to date, much still remains to be known about its pathophysiology, especially for the underlying neural circuit mechanisms. To better improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of this mental disorder, it is imperative and also very important to make more clarifications on the underlying neural circuitry mechanisms responsible for the occurrence of depression. Accordingly, here we briefly summarized some key studies pertaining to the neural circuits responsible for depression, and hopefully to shed some lights on the future studies concerning this annoying mental disorder.