Interestingly, while the changes in microglia and astrocytes in the mPFC and vHi in our study are consistent with other studies [16, 42, 21], To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate changes in local cytokines and the density of microglia and astrocytes in the emotion-related amygdala in an IFN-α-induced model of depression, suggesting amygdala is involved in the pathogenesis of IFN-α-induced depression. Here, IFNA1 is linked to major depressive disorder.