A.J. Robison on the Neural Basis of Sex Differences in Depression – #37

Corey and Steve talk with MSU Neuroscientist A.J. Robison about why females may be more likely to suffer from depression than males. A.J. reviews past findings that low testosterone and having a smaller hippocampus may predict depression risk. He explains how a serendipitous observation opened up his current line of research and describes tools he uses to study neural circuits. Steve asks about the politics of studying sex differences and tells of a start up using CRISPR to attack heart disease. The three end with a discussion of the psychological effects of ketamine, testosterone and deep brain stimulation.Topics01:18 – Link between antidepressants, neurogenesis and reducing risk of depression13:54 – Nature of Mouse models23:19 – How you tell whether a mouse exhibits depressive symptoms32:36 – Liz Williams’ serendipitous finding and the issue of biological sex45:47 – A.J.’s research plans for circuit specific gene editing in the mouse brain and a start up’s plan to use it to tackle human cardiovascular disease59:07 – Psychological and Neurological Effects of Ketamine. Testosterone and Deep Brain StimulationResourcesTranscriptRobison Lab at MSU@RobisonLabMSUPapersAndrogen-dependent excitability of mouse ventral hippocampal afferents to nucleus accumbens underlies sex-specific susceptibility to stress.Neurogenesis and The Effect of AntidepressantsIntegrating Interleukin-6 into depression diagnosis and treatmentSub-chronic variable stress induces sex-specific effects on glutamatergic synapses in the nucleus accumbens.Prefrontal cortical circuit for depression- and anxiety-related behaviors mediated by cholecystokinin: role of ΔFosB.Emerging role of viral vectors for circuit-specific gene interrogation and manipulation in rodent brain. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.