► We examined changes in depressed mood, behaviour and cognitive bias.
This essay traces the origins and theoretical bases of our animal models of depression or depressed-like behaviours in humans and indicates how they have evolved from behavioural assays used to measure the potency and efficacy of potential candidate drugs to tools by which endophenotypes of depression may be identified and verified pharmacologically.
Morrison [ 11] found adolescents reporting sleep problems showed more anxious, depressed, inattentive, and conduct disorder behaviour than those who had no, or occasional, sleep problems.
This preliminary study investigated whether, in depressed adolescents, cognitive-behaviour therapy reduces mood-related ruminative response style.
Low intakes of omega-3 fatty acids impair astrocyte-mediated vascular coupling that contributes to reduced gray matter volume in the prefrontal cortex [ 29] and research has suggested that lipid profiles comprising a low docosahexaenoic acid percentage and omega-3 proportions predicted risk of suicidal behaviour among depressed patients over a 2-year period [ 30].
The unstandardised regression coefficient for non-depressed versus depressed for the adaptive behaviour composite score was 5.35, SE 1.73, p=0.002.
In the second and third experiments, we showed that in the presence of a very mild threatening stimulus, defensive reactions were either enhanced or depressed depending on the behaviour of a nearby conspecific.
There is increasing evidence that certain features of the behaviour of depressed mothers are associated with adverse outcome, in particular their lack of responsiveness to the infant, the reduced ability to perceive their infant's signals and less mimetic behavior [31], [32] with a resultant lack of contingency between the infants actions and the mothers responses [33].
They speculated that the same mechanism, disturbances in the feeding behaviour of depressed mothers, could affect both tails of the growth distribution, leading either to stunting or obesity.
