Inhibiting medial septal cholinergic neurons with DREADD alleviated anxiety-like behaviors in mice

Neuroprotective Role of Dietary Supplementation with Omega-3 Fatty Acids in the Presence of Basal Forebrain Cholinergic Neurons Degeneration in Aged Mice

“…Since anxiety is reported to increase in aging rodents [66] and cholinergic manipulations are known to influence anxiety levels [67,68], in the present study we used the EPM as a validated test to measure anxiety in rodents based on their natural aversion for heights and open spaces [39,40,69,70].…”

How much fear is in anxiety?

“…Previous studies investigating the neuropharmacological basis of altered open-arm avoidance of inbred mouse strains using the EPM, report a consistent dose-dependent anxiolytic effect of systemically administered benzodiazepines ( Rodgers et al, 1992; Cole and Rodgers, 1995; Holmes and Rodgers, 1999; Griebel et al, 2000 ) which emphasizes the predictive validity of this testing situation. More recent studies which assess the involvement of specific brain areas in the expression and regulation of open-arm avoidance in rats and mice implicate the prefrontal cortex (PFC) ( Adhikari et al, 2010,2011; Kumar etal., 2013 ), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis(BNST) ( Kim etal., 2013 ), lateral septum (LS) to anterior hypothalamic area (AHA) projection ( Anthony et al, 2014 ), medial septum (MS) ( Shin et al, 2009; Zhang et al, 2017 ), septo-habenular pathway ( Yamaguchi et al, 2013 ), basolateral amygdala (BLA) ( Sorregotti et al, 2018 ) and specifically its projections towards the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) ( Tye et al, 2011 ) and ventral hippocampus (vHPC) ( Felix-Ortiz et al, 2013 ) and PFC ( Felix-Ortiz et al, 2016 ), vHPC to PFC projection ( Padilla-Coreano et al, 2016 ), vHPC-lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) projection ( Jimenez et al, 2018 ), habenula (Hb) ( Pang et al, 2016 ), interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) ( Zhao-Shea et al, 2015 ), laterodorsal tegmentum (LdT) ( Yang et al, 2016 ) but also the PAG ( Santos et al, 2003; Netto and Guimarães, 2004; Borelli and Brandão, 2008; Lima et al, 2008; Campos and Guimarães, 2009; Mendes-Gomes and Nunes-de Souza, 2009; Terzian et al, 2009; Muthuraju et al, 2016 ) and the SC ( Muthuraju et al, 2016 ). It is clear that all these brain structures cannot mediate the same types and aspects of avoidance behavior (e.g.…”

Hypersensitivity of Prelimbic Cortex Neurons Contributes to Aggravated Nociceptive Responses in Rats With Experience of Chronic Inflammatory Pain

“…The rat was placed in a 100 × 100 × 50 cm box exposed to 50 lux illumination, with its activities videotaped for 10 min (Zhang M. et al, 2017 ; Zhang Y. et al, 2017 ). Time spent (C.Time) and distance traveled (C.Dis) in the central area (60 × 60 cm), and total distance traveled (T.Dis) in the field were measured using the SMART software (v2.5.21, Panlab, Harvard Apparatus).…”

“…AAV5-CaMKIIα-hM4D(Gi)-mCherry and AAV5-CaMKIIα-mCherry viruses were packaged and purchased from the University of North Carolina Vector Core Facilities (Zhang Y. et al, 2017 ). AAV virus solution was microinjected into PL (AP +2.7/3.2 mm; ML ± 0.6 mm from Bregma; DV −2.5 mm from brain surface) with 0.5 μl/hole, 2 holes/side, at a speed of 0.1 μl/min after being anesthetized with 1% sodium pentobarbital (0.5 ml/100 g, i.p .).…”