Scientists at McGill University and the Douglas Research Centre have identified specific brain cell types that show altered activity in people with major depression, a finding that could help sharpen the search for more targeted treatments.<\/p>\n
The work, published in Nature Genetics, combines genetic risk signals with cell-level measurements from human brain tissue to pinpoint where depression-related changes appear most strongly.<\/p>\n
Depression is among the world\u2019s leading causes of disability, and many patients do not respond fully to existing therapies. Researchers have long suspected that depression involves measurable biological changes, but mapping them to precise cell types has been difficult.<\/p>\n
The team relied on post-mortem samples from the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank, one of the specialized collections that includes tissue from people diagnosed with psychiatric conditions.<\/p>\n
Using single-nucleus methods, the researchers profiled gene regulation and gene activity across thousands of individual cells, comparing samples from 59 people with depression and 41 without it.<\/p>\n
The analysis highlighted two cell populations with notable differences in depression: a group of excitatory neurons involved in mood and stress-related circuits, and a subtype of microglia, immune cells that help regulate inflammation in the brain.<\/p>\n
In both cell types, multiple genes showed altered patterns of activity, suggesting that disruptions in neural signaling and immune-related pathways may converge in the disorder.<\/p>\n
By tying depression-associated genetic mechanisms to defined cell types, the study offers a clearer roadmap for experiments that test how these cellular shifts affect brain function over time.<\/p>\n
Researchers caution that the findings do not translate directly into an immediate new therapy, but they may help guide drug development and biomarker research toward more precise biological targets.<\/p>\n
Senior author Gustavo Turecki said the approach provides a clearer picture of where disruptions occur and which cells are involved, reinforcing the view that depression reflects identifiable brain changes rather than a purely psychological experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New single-cell analyses link major depression to altered activity in specific neurons and microglia, offering clearer targets for future treatments and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[5151,9832,6753,9831,9713,9707,9708],"miestas":[],"class_list":["post-18737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","tag-depresija","tag-douglas-research-centre","tag-genomika","tag-mcgill-university","tag-mikroglijos","tag-nature-genetics","tag-neuronai"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18737"},{"taxonomy":"miestas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cp.snarskis.lt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/miestas?post=18737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}