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Depression

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Neurogenesis in the Adult Brain II

Abstract

Depression is one of the most prevalent and costly brain diseases. Available antidepressant drugs are safe and effective, but less than half of all patients attain complete remission with single antidepressant and others exhibit partial, refractory or intolerant responses to treatment. Therefore, these findings emphasize the need to discover new antidepressants. The neurogenic hypothesis postulates that a reduced production of new neurons in the adult hippocampus is involved in pathogenesis of depression and an enhancement of hippocampal neurogenesis is one of mechanisms for the successful antidepressant treatment. This article examines this hypothesis with experimental and clinical data.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by Grant-in-aid No. 18591269 for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Kita 15, Nishi 7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-8638, Japan

    Shin Nakagawa

  2. Division of Molecular Psychiatry, Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities, Connecticut Mental Health Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ronald S. Duman

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  1. Shin Nakagawa
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Correspondence to Shin Nakagawa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Histology and Neuroanatomy, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, 160-8402, Japan

    Tatsunori Seki Ph.D. (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Institute of Molecular Medicine Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, 1 Kawasumi, Mizuho-cho, Mizuho-ku, Nagoya, 467-8601, Japan

    Kazunobu Sawamoto Ph.D. (Professor) (Professor)

  3. Department of Neurology, University of Michigan, 109 Zina Pitcher Place 5021 BSRB, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Jack M. Parent M.D. (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

  4. Department of Neurosurgery, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA

    Arturo Alvarez-Buylla Ph.D. (Professor) (Professor)

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Nakagawa, S., Duman, R.S. (2011). Depression. In: Seki, T., Sawamoto, K., Parent, J.M., Alvarez-Buylla, A. (eds) Neurogenesis in the Adult Brain II. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53945-2_5

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