Select Page

This summer, I will be staying in State College to continue working on my research project and to finish my honors thesis in biology. Through my blogs during the summer, I will discuss some of the exciting work I am doing in lab and, more generally, I’ll share the progress I make each week writing the thesis. Since this is an introductory blog, I thought I’d start off by giving background on my research and the potential impacts the research could have for human health in the future.

My honors thesis project involves investigating the links between diet and depression. Specifically, I’m interested in studying how eating a diet with high amounts of saturated and unsaturated fats can increase susceptibility to depression. In the past, scientific studies and literature reviews have shown that obese patients, who presumably consume a high-fat diet, have a 55% higher risk of developing depression than healthy weight individuals. What’s more, depressed patients have a 58% increased risk of gaining weight and becoming obese, suggesting reciprocal effects between one’s diet choices and risk for depression (Luppino et al, 2010). My project is an attempt to better understand this association between diet and depression, and to potentially figure out the brain networks responsible for this diet-induced depression.

For my study, I utilized genetically mutant mice that have previously been shown to produce depression-like behaviors (If you’re a bit confused as to how we can determine if a mouse is depressed or anxious, don’t worry, I’ll explain that in my next blog). The control mice are mice without any genetic manipulations. Both groups of mice are then fed with one of two diets: either a normal, control diet that lab mice are commonly given or a diet with 60% higher fat content. The mutants I used had defects in GABA functioning, which is the inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. I then conducted 5 different behavior tests on these mice to measure their level of anxiety and cognitive abilities. These tests included the Open Field Test, Elevated Plus Maze Test, Y-Maze Spontaneous Alternation Test, Sucrose Splash Test, and Novel Object Recognition Test.