Dr Lindskog and her team used FSL rats, which are rats that have been specially bred with a disposition for \u2018depression\u2019. The rats were first put through two tests to confirm that they had the symptoms that are also characteristic of human depression. In the first, the rats\u2019 memories were checked by repeatedly being exposed to different objects; in the second, the team assessed their level of apathy by releasing them in a container of water and observing whether they merely stayed floating in the container or immediately tried to climb out (non of the rats had to stay in the water for more than five minutes). In both cases the FSL rats\u2019 results were compared with normal laboratory rats, and memory disorders and apathy could be confirmed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The researchers then injected the rats with D-serine. This substance improved their memories but had no effect on the apathy. \u201cWe have shown that there are two symptoms here that can be influenced independently of one another, which means they could be treated in tandem in patients with depression,\u201d says Dr Lindskog. The researchers also studied the synaptic activity in the hippocampus of the rats, a part of the brain which plays an important part in the memory.<\/p>\n They found that there was a much higher degree of synaptic activity in the brains of the depressed rats than in the controls<\/strong>. However, when the researchers tried to increase the level of signal transmission, they found the brains of the depressed rats to be unresponsive, which indicated that they had a lower plasticity that rendered them unable to increase neuronal activity when needed \u2013 unlike the brains of the healthy rats<\/strong>.<\/p>\n When the brain samples were soaked in D-serine, the plasticity of the depressed rats\u2019 brains improved. D-serine is a substance secreted by astrocytes, which are support cells for brain neurons. \u201cWe don\u2019t actually know very much about these glial cells, but it\u2019s very likely that they perform a very important function in the brain,\u201d says Dr Lindskog.<\/p>\n It is hoped that their discoveries will eventually lead to new therapies for depression. \u201cD-serine doesn\u2019t pass the blood-brain barrier particularly well, so it\u2019s not really a suitable candidate on which to base a drug, but the mechanism that we\u2019ve identified, whereby it\u2019s possible to increase plasticity and improve the memory, is a feasible route that we might be able to reach in a way that doesn\u2019t involve D-serine,\u201d says Dr Lindskog.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Karolinska Institute press release via AlphaGalileo: During depression, the brain becomes less plastic and adaptable, and thus less able to perform certain tasks, like storing memories. Researchers at… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[42,14,19,158,141],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1639,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions\/1639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Brain3.jpg\" "\\"brain\\"")
During depression, the brain becomes less plastic and adaptable, and thus less able to perform certain tasks, like storing memories<\/strong>. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now traced the brain\u2019s lower plasticity to reduced functionality in its support cells<\/strong>, and believe that learning more about these cells can pave the way for radical new therapies for depression. \u201cWe were able to cure memory dysfunction in \u2018depressed\u2019 rats by giving them doses of D-serine,\u201d says Mia Lindskog, biologist and Assistant Professor at Karolinska Institutet\u2019s Department of Neuroscience.<\/p>\n