Scientists at the University of Iowa have found that by disrupting the action of a certain brain protein involved in fear behavior and anxiety they were able to replicate an effect currently available from antidepressant medication.

The study was done on mice and involved blocking the ion channel in the brain known as ASIC1a, which is commonly found in areas of the brain that regulate emotion. The study targeted the amygdala, which communicates with many parts of the brain and is involved in the regulation or modulation of a variety of cognitive functions, such as attention, perception, and explicit memory.

At least 14 million suffer from depression and the causes of the mental illness are still not well understood. Many people take antidepressant medication, but many also cannot tolerate these drugs.

The researchers showed that ASIC1a’s effect also arose from a new and different biological mechanism. Dr. John Wemmie, at the UI Carver College of Medicine, said, “We need antidepressants with new mechanisms of action to help those people who don’t respond to what is currently available.”

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.