The Role of Affect-Related Neuropeptides in Health and Disease

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue entitled “The Role of Affect-Related Neuropeptides in Health and Disease”.

The subjective appraisal of experiences that give rise to positive and negative affective states is one of the most powerful determinants of behavior.

In contrast to early conceptualizations of distinct “reward” and “fear” brain circuits, the encoding of positive dimensions, i.e., incentive motivation in response to appetitive stimuli and negative states, i.e., punishment sensitivity and avoidance, involves brain areas and circuitries that are highly conserved across species and largely overlapping.

However, aside from classical neurotransmitters, the numerous endogenous peptides, which are abundantly expressed in the limbic brain, modulate behavior across the nuanced affective spectrum. Notably, high receptor binding affinity and selectivity, peculiar mechanisms of release, and increased persistence in extracellular space make neuropeptides ideal candidates for acting on long-lasting neuron-to-neuron communication and, as such, mediating affective- and motivated behavior in response to environmental emotional stimuli.

This Special Issue aims at gathering recent advances in the role of affect-related neuropeptides, including neuropeptide Y, oxytocin, corticotropin-releasing factor, orexin, cholecystokinin, calcitonin gene-related peptide, endogenous opioids, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the context of reward and aversion. Contributions addressing neuropeptides’ involvement in maladaptive affective states associated with pathological conditions, such as depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders, are also of interest. As such, neuropeptides hold great promise for the identification of new biomarkers for more effective diagnosis, besides representing exciting candidates for novel therapeutics.

Dr. Anna Brancato
Prof. Carla Cannizzaro
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• neuropeptides
• depression
• anxiety
• addiction
• eating disorders