Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-16

Effects of early rearing environment on cortical and limbic activity in the rat: validation of an animal model of depression

Objective

Depression is a devastating mental illness associated with extremely high social and economic costs, given that the lifetime prevalence of this debilitating disease can be as high as 15%. Characterized byseveral emotional and cognitive disturbances, this d isease can also be fatal as a significant proportion ofits sufferers commit suicide. Although treatments are available for depression, many of its sufferers do not respond adequately to currently available antidepressant drugs. Furthermore, these drugs oft en have unwanted side effects and the onset of their therapeutic effects can take several weeks, highlighting the need for development of more effective antidepressant drug treatments. When studying mental illness, researchers use animal models to replicat e certain features of a disorder to study its possible biological causes, allowing them to develop specific treatments for the disease. In humans, early life trauma is associated with an increased risk of developing depression in adulthood. Similarly, stud ies in rats indicate that stress in early life leads to later changes in biology and behaviour that resemble symptoms of depression; moreover, some of these changes can be reversed by antidepressant drugs. Recent studies have shown that depressed patients have abnormal activity in brain regions involved in emotion and cognition, that activity in these areas is linked in a complex manner, and that these abnormalities can be ameliorated by successful antidepressant drug treatment. Thus, the current project pr oposes to study, in rats, a) the effects of early life stress on activity in these brain regions, b) the relationship between activity in these different areas, and c) the effects of antidepressant drugs on brain activity after early life stress. These stu dies will enhance our understanding of brain function in depression, which may lead to the discovery of better treatments for this disease.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-7
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

IIF - Marie Curie actions-Incoming International Fellowships

Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
EU contribution
No data
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0