Study explains how antidepressant increases brain plasticity
A recent study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, conducted by researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland, sheds light on the mechanisms of neural plasticity induced by the antidepressant fluoxetine. Previous research by the same team showed that chronic treatment with antidepressants increased neural plasticity through direct binding to neurotrophic receptor TrkB, but the mechanism of relevant neural circuits remained unknown. In the current study, the researchers conducted a classical fear conditioning paradigm with mice and discovered that