BDNF and depressive disorder: Intriguingly, female AD rats showed fewer depression-related behaviors, linked to increased hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), crucial for neuronal differentiation and preservation, suggesting that BDNF mitigates AD cognitive impairment and holds antidepressant properties, observed in females, but not in males with AD (Linnemann and Lang, 2020; Naghibi et al., 2021).