Find Counseling > Resources > Psychology Briefs > Gene Linked to Depression Found to Enlarge Brain Region

Gene Linked to Depression Found to Enlarge Brain Region

A variation of a gene linked to mental illness has been found to shape the pulvinar, a part of the brain associated with negative emotions.

University of Texas researchers studied the brains of 49 deceased people, finding that those who had carried two short copies of the SERT gene, a gene related to serotonin transmission, tended to have pulvinars about 20 percent larger than others.

People with this variation have previously been shown to be more sensitive to emotional stimuli and more likely to be depressed.

Read more: Gene linked with mental illness shapes brain region, researchers find

SHARE: del.icio.us del.icio.us | Digg It! digg | Add to FURL FURL | Add to Netscape Netscape | Add to Reddit reddit | Stumble! Stumble! | Add to Yahoo! My Web BETA My Web

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.findcounseling.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/113

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Category Tag Cloud



About

This page contains a single entry from Psychology Briefs, the FindCounseling.com Blog, posted on November 8, 2006 2:51 PM.

The previous post was Happy People Get Sick Less Often.

The next post is New Model for Brain Chemistry of Depression.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the Psychology Research Archives.

Subscribe

Site Search

Therapist Finder





Advanced Search