New Study: Chronic Stress/Melanocortin can cause Anhedonia

[jamielondon]

Hi guys, I wanted to post this article I found that says a new study has shown that those who experienced depression and chronic stress are chemically inducing their anhedonia:

Malenka is senior author of the new study, published July 12 in Nature, which reveals a novel drug target by showing how a hormone known to affect appetite turns off the brain’s ability to experience pleasure when an animal is stressed. This hormone, melanocortin, signals to an ancient and almost universal apparatus deep in the brain called the reward circuit, which has evolved to guide animals toward resources, behaviors and environments — such as food, sex and warmth — that enhance their prospects for survival. “This is the first study to suggest that we should look at the role of melanocortin in depression-related syndromes,” said Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, professor and chair of neuroscience and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

…“A few scattered studies had suggested that chronic stress increased melanocortin levels in the brain,” he said. “And it was known that stressed animals have heightened numbers of receptors for melanocortin in the nucleus accumbens,” a key region of the reward circuit. If this all-important circuit is working properly, it doles out pleasure when an animal achieves a desirable goal or experiences rewarding stimuli, such as food or sex. If it’s not working properly, anhedonia is the result.

I know low dopamine has been seen as a cause of the emotional bluntness some of us are experiencing but with our atrocious sleep and gaba deficiencies, the chronic stress might actually be impacting our brains/emotions too via the release of ‘melanocortin’. I just wanted to put this out there- perhaps another piece of the puzzle?

Link to article:

med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/july/malenka.html

[spstriken]

In my opinion has nothing to do with our condition. Muscle loss, body hair loss, wiered hormone profile can not be explained with this study. A lot of people have stress but no body gets what we have got after using 5AR inhibtors. This is BS.

[jamielondon]

This was just in reference to the emotional bluntness not the other side effects.