There were recent studies conducted on mice in which the scientists wanted to learn as to what happens when small mice is being bullied by larger mice. The scientists have learnt that this kind of interaction of the smaller mice that are being bullied by the larger mice results in the genetic changes in the brain and this would help the scientists learn as to what are the things that would happen in humans who are being bullied upon.

The different psychological analyses among different individuals who have been bullied by their fellows have brought about one fact in the wide open and that is common among all is that they go through a constant feeling of fear and as seen in the case of mice that this can cause genetic changes in the brain and this will help the researchers to learn more about depression and other mental illnesses.

The study suggests that the part of the brain is linked to addiction, which plays a role in illnesses that are characterized by chronic anxiety and social withdrawal. The researchers found a substance in the brain known as BDNF that seems to be the causative agent in controlling the response of whether the bullied mice will turn into fearful The experiment suggests that a part of the brain linked to addiction also plays a previously unsuspected role in illnesses characterized by chronic anxiety and social withdrawal, Texas researchers report Thursday in the journal Science. In fact, a substance produced in the brain, called BDNF, seems to be the culprit, controlling whether the bullied mice turned into a fearful loaner or not.

This finding helped the researchers understand a lot of the myth lying as to how people develop behavioral changes that affect them throughout their lives.

The researchers conducted a study in which they subjected the mice into a very aggressive environment, which was identical to the environment of the wild and these mice were placed in a cage with the aggressive large white mouse and that mouse just battled them and make them move to one corner of the cage. After that the researchers moved the mice in a separate cage that was separated out by a white glass from the white mouse and there was no obvious danger to these mice, but they saw and felt the danger pretty closely and then these mice were subjected to meet a new bully for about ten consecutive days.

This just brought about really drastic changes in the behavior of the mice and they were seen to move away from mice who were presumably friendly little mice.

The chemical, BDNF, is a chemical, which is important for the growth and maturation of nerve cells. According to the research there are some antidepressants that are thought to increase BDNF levels in the hippocampus, boosting neurons.

It was also found that too much of the BDNF in the mesolimbic system was really bad, which is a dopamine pathway. The mice that were bullied were found to have increased levels of BDNF and that just in turn switched on several hundred genes located deep in the front part of the brain and this then resulted in the unusual gene activation paralleled the animals’ social withdrawal.
The scientists then injected the mice with a virus that just simply shut off the BDNF production only in this region of the brain and they then repeated the bullying experiment. It was shown that the mice who were lacking the BDNF did not become scared, as they did not know how to respond to emotional threat.

Scientists say that it is really good to understand this phenomenon and said that it is really good that we have this pathway so that we can understand and react to such conditions and know as to what and who is the cause of such feelings that we are going through.

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