Nutrition and mood disorders: Mechanistic insights, preclinical models, and clinical perspectives

Mood disorders, including depression and anxiety, are rising at an alarming rate and represent one of today’s most pressing global health challenges. Their etiology is multifactorial, involving complex interactions between genetic, environmental, lifestyle, and neurobiological factors. Central to these disorders are alterations in brain plasticity, disruptions in cognitive processing, and persistent low-grade neuroinflammation, each of which contributes to the onset and progression of mood symptoms. Dysregulation in synaptic remodeling, impairments in executive function and memory, and heightened pro-inflammatory signaling (e.g., via microglia and cytokine cascades) are now widely recognized as central to these disorders.

Amid these converging mechanisms, nutrition emerges as a powerful and modifiable factor capable of influencing emotional vulnerability and resilience to these disorders. Nutritional strategies, ranging from caloric restriction and intermittent fasting to Mediterranean and ketogenic diets, as well as the use of fermented food, probiotics or bioactive compounds, have been shown to modulate brain function via effects on synaptic plasticity, neurotrophic signaling (e.g., BDNF), metabolic regulation, immune activity, and gut–brain communication.
Critically, the effects of these interventions are not uniform: age and sex differences play a central role in shaping individual outcomes, pointing toward the need for precision in integrating nutrition into behavioral neuroscience research.

This Research aims to integrate mechanistic and clinical perspectives on how nutrition alters mood-related processes in the brain, contributing to a comprehensive view of how targeted dietary strategies can modulate mood, enhance psychological well-being, and inform the development of precision interventions in psychiatry and related fields.

We welcome contributions that investigate the mechanistic foundations, behavioral outcomes, and translational challenges of nutritional approaches in mood disorders. Submissions may span molecular signaling, microbiome modulation, behavioral phenotyping, and clinical intervention studies, with particular emphasis on age- and sex-specific effects, translational relevance, and methodological rigor.

Topics of interest:
• Sex differences in nutritional modulation of depression and anxiety outcomes: How estrogen and testosterone modulate dietary effects in affective behaviors and mood disorder phenotypes.
• Age as a biological variable in nutritional neuroscience: How developmental stage and aging influence neurobiological responses to caloric restriction, fasting, and other dietary strategies in mood regulation.
• Anxiolytic and antidepressant effects of caloric restriction and fasting: Behavioral, neurochemical, and physiological outcomes in rodents and humans.
• Chrononutrition and circadian alignment in mood regulation: Effects of meal timing, feeding windows, and circadian biology on stress resilience and mood outcomes.
• Nutrient sensing, synaptic plasticity, and neurotrophic signaling: Roles of nutrient-sensing pathways, synaptic remodeling, neurotrophic factors, and epigenetic regulation in shaping mood and cognition.
• Nutritional modulation of inflammatory signaling in mood disorders: Inflammatory mediators, glial activation, and neuroimmune crosstalk under different dietary regimes.
• Microbiome-mediated mechanisms linking diet to mood disorders: Roles of fermented foods, probiotics and prebiotics in anxiety and depression.
• Bioactive compounds and psychotropic nutraceutical development: Polyphenols, omega-3 fatty acids, flavonoids, and short-chain fatty acids as candidates for mood-targeting formulations.
• Standardization challenges in preclinical models of nutritional psychiatry: Inconsistent definitions of caloric restriction, fasting, and ketogenic protocols and underreporting of age and sex as variables.
• Personalized nutritional strategies for mood disorder subtypes: Precision approaches integrating genotyping, metabolomics, and microbiome profiling to tailor dietary interventions in affective disorders.
• Barriers to implementing nutritional interventions: Challenges of adherence, cultural acceptability, sustainability, and ethical considerations in vulnerable populations

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: mood disorder, caloric restriction, intermittent fasting, neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, gut-brain axis, microbiome, sex differences, translational

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.