Notably, astrocytic function is affected by the signaling systems assumed as traditional culprits of depression, namely glucocorticoids (Yin et al., 2013), BDNF (Ye et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2015), serotonin (Hertz et al., 2015), noradrenaline (Madrigal et al., 2009; Pankratov and Lalo, 2015) or dopamine (Shao et al., 2013). This evidence concerns the gene BDNF and major depressive disorder.