Chaudhury & Tye

I had an incredibly hard time reading Chaudhury et al.’s paper. I don’t know too much about the difference between normal and Letter submissions to journals, but it seemed like the paper was made more complicated and less effective in its conclusion and discussion by not having enough space to go fully in-depth. Although it was concise and the results were appropriately evaluated, I was disappointed with the lack of body in the paper. Perhaps this is personal preference; perhaps it’s a fault in my reading level.

On a similar note, I found Chaudhury’s paper to be lacking in defense of its methods. Even after looking over the schematic in the supplementary figures, it isn’t clear to me what is “subthreshold” about the social-defeat stress paradigm. While reading, I took this to mean that the stress is below the threshold to cause a depressive phenotype or is below the threshold to cause a stress reaction, but even these two versions of my interpretation are different enough to warrant explanation; my understanding of the paper depends on it. Additionally, I found Tye et al.’s animal model of depression to be the superior experimental measure – it was thoughtful to consider locomotion, especially considering that Chaudhury’s only two measures of depression (social avoidance and anhedonia) are both somewhat related to reward.

Lastly, I’d be interested to see future research on the functional interaction between the circuits that were studied, particularly because of the stark differences in excitability between the VTA-NAc and VTA-mPFC pathways. I also wonder if the effect of these experiments on non-dopamine neurons in the VTA is significant enough to change the functional properties of these circuits in relation to the depressive phenotype.