Incubation of depression: ECM assembly and parvalbumin interneurons after stress

•The stress field should adopt aspects of the addiction field in terms of studying long-term effects, as highlighted by the ‘incubation’ aspect.•A biphasic temporal regulation of ECM/PNNs and PV+-interneuron function is observed after stress; where only few studies focus on long-lasting effects of stress.•The direction of stress-induced alterations on ECM largely depends on time elapsed after stress exposure (stress recency), as well as on stress timing (early life, adolescent, adulthood) and the brain region under investigation.•All factors, i.e. stress duration (acute vs. chronic), timing of stress and stress recency are important aspects to include in study designs.