Abstract
Stress predisposes the morbidity of the psychiatric disorders such as depression. To address the mechanism underlying stress susceptibility, recent progress in neural circuit regulating it was overviewed. In particular, based on a central role of hypothalamus‐pituitary‐adrenal axis in the mammalian stress response, modulatory effect of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex interacting with monoaminergic system was discussed. While recent genetic approach manipulating the neural activity in a pathway‐specific or cell type‐specific manner enables identification of the neural circuits responsible for stress susceptibility, it remains elusive how those neural circuits interact with each other. Theoretical analysis of the neural activity recorded simultaneously in multiple brain regions needs to be done to construct an integrated model for the neural system regulating stress susceptibility.
