Merson Lecture 2023: The Neurobiology of Depression

The Neurobiology of Depression

Professor Eric J. Nestler, M.D., PhD.

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Depression is a common, chronic, and debilitating syndrome, which involves dysregulation throughout emotional centers in the brain. Our laboratory has focused on stable changes within these centers that control life-long vulnerability to different forms of stress and the induction of depression-related behavioral abnormalities in mouse model and human. A major finding are dramatic differences in the effects of stress and depression in males versus females, which suggests that depression may be a fundamentally distinct syndrome in the two sexes.

Current studies are exploring the detailed mechanisms by which specific gene expression abnormalities identified in mouse models and human depression contribute to depression. This work establishes gene expression and epigenetic regulation as important mechanisms underlying the ways in which a history of stress causes lasting changes in specific brain regions which result in depression in vulnerable individuals oftentimes in a sex-specific manner. The long-term goal is to use these insights to develop improved diagnostic tests and treatments for depression and related syndromes.

Professor Eric J. Nestler is the Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where he serves as Dean for Academic Affairs, Chief Scientific Officer, and Director of the Friedman Brain Institute. After obtaining his B.A., Ph.D., and M.D. degrees from Yale, he completed psychiatry residency training also at Yale. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (1998) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005). He is past President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2011) and the Society for Neuroscience (2017).