Yoojoo Cha (Seoul International School)

Olivia Yoomin Sung (Seoul Foreign School)

Yoojoo Cha (Seoul International School)

Yoojoo Cha (Seoul International School)

Ji Yoon Park (Choate Rosemary Hall)

Olivia Yoomin Sung (Seoul Foreign School)

Depression is a disorder characterized by consistently low moods, disruption in sleep and appetite, and a loss of interest in hobbies. Its increasingly widespread socioeconomic impacts, especially amongst the youth, and the lack of reliable treatment methods have made preclinical models crucial. Our research used mice as a model to compare the depressed hippocampus and amygdala to its non-depressed counterparts using a 9.4 FT-ICR and a HTX-M5 matrix to perform matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI). The mice were given clomipramine for 16 days after 6 days of birth, and, given that social defeat stress is one of the major causes of depression, stress was induced in the mice through attacks from other violent mice. After the two models (depressed and wild) showed sufficient depressive behaviors, we extracted the mice’s brains, cryosected them at a thickness of 12 µm, sprayed matrix for tissue imaging, and performed MALDI-imaging to study the arrangement of specific molecules in the brain within different molecular weight ranges (m/z 160–1,499). Using MALDI, molecules from the depressed and control samples were ionized and sorted by mass. After searching Lipid Maps with this information, it was found that the quantity of ceramides, ceramide phosphates, hexosyl ceramides, and sulfatides in particular were more prevalent in depressed brains.