Study looks at why people may feel more helpless in stressful situations than others

Scientists have identified a list of brain areas that might have a critical role to play in stress-induced depression

From the March 30, 2019 EurekAlert

“Certain patterns were revealed in the stressed brain and the scientists identified a list of brain areas that might have a critical role to play in stress-induced depression. Looking at these brain activities the study, published in Frontiers in Neural Circuits, opens up possibilities for identifying new targets for the treatment of depression. 

They explain that with the exception of a few brain areas, “mice showing ‘helpless’ behavior had an overall brain-wide reduction in the level of neuronal activation compared with mice showing ‘resilient’ behavior.” 

“In addition, the helpless mice showed a strong trend of having higher similarity in whole-brain activity profile among individuals, suggesting that helplessness is represented by a more stereotypic brain-wide activation pattern,” explained the authors of the study.”

Read the entire news release at https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/f-sla033016.php