NPAS4 and major depressive disorder: Similarly, we found that reducing mPFC Npas4 alters expression of numerous downstream genes reported to be upregulated in stress-susceptible animals (Bagot et al., 2016) that are important for ribosome function or excitatory synapse organization, activity, and signaling – the majority of which are differentially expressed in human patients with MDD (Labonté et al., 2017).