Moreover, ZEA has been effective in suppressing inflammation (Firdous et al., 2015; El-Akabawy and El-Sherif, 2019; Li et al., 2022) and apoptosis (Ying et al., 2017) in cerebral tissues, through decreasing TNF-α and IL-1β content, and depressing amounts of apoptotic proteins such as caspase-3-cleaved, consequently improved cognitive function (Stringham et al., 2019) and alleviated depression and anxiety in animal studies (Zhou et al., 2018). The gene discussed is TNF; the disease is major depressive disorder.