Behavioral and Fluorescent-Based Immunohistochemistry Protocols for Examining Antidepressant-Like Effects of Melatonin in Mice.

Antidepressants are characterized by their ability to decrease despair behavior assessed in mice as a decrease in immobility time in the forced swimming test (FST) (antidepressant-like behavior). This behavioral parameter is associated with increased neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus of the rodents summitted to this test. Herein, we describe an optimized protocol used to characterize the melatonin antidepressant-like effect associated with its pro-neurogenic activity after an acute and a triple administration to mice measured by the FST and fluorescence-based immunohistochemistry in brain tissue, respectively.