Article Excerpt: Depression, or major depressive disorder, is a mood disorder that causes persistent feelings of sadness and loss of interest. Despite being widespread, the mechanisms underlying depression remain unknown.
Depression symptoms may stem from how the brain determines whether things are rewarding. For example, a slice of pizza may be pleasing to someone who has no food but not pleasing to someone who is expecting a gourmet meal. The benchmark used by the brain to determine if a given event is positive or negative is called the decisional reference point. Researchers have proposed that an elevated reference point might cause someone to view once pleasurable experiences as negative.
An NIH-funded research team led by Drs. Aadith Vittala, Dan Iosifescu, and Paul Glimcher of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine set out to test this. They asked 50 people with moderate or severe depression and 70 healthy people to play two video games designed to measure a person’s decisional reference point. The results were published on May 18, 2026, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/2c87dvnc
Article Source: NIH News