Durante su visita, el Prof. Douglas Steele, PhD (Universidad de Dundee) brindó una charla Translational Research in Treatment-Resistant Mood Disorder. 

Resumen de la charla:

Psychiatric disorders are the leading cause of years-of-life-lived-with-disability worldwide. Antidepressant medications were discovered around 1960 and more recent developments, such as SSRIs, are no more effective than the original antidepressants. After more than half a century, we still do not understand how antidepressants cause remission from depression, let alone why so many patients do not respond to treatments and remain chronically ill.
In 1991, largely on the basis of animal model studies of human illness, Deakin & Graeff published ‘5-HT and mechanisms of defence’ which has been cited over 600 times and recently reviewed (Deakin, 2014, ‘The origins of ‘5-HT and mechanisms of defence’ by Deakin and Graeff: A personal perspective’, Journal of Psychopharmacology). Despite the original article being highly cited, there have been relatively few attempts at testing the theory in humans and none using instrumental learning tasks during fMRI in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Recently, Prof. Steele published a test of Deakin & Graeff’s predictions (Johnston B, et al, 2015, Brain). The results strongly supported most of Deakin & Graeff’s predictions, extending this to treatment-resistant mood disorder.