Adverse events in early life can modulate the response to additional stressors later in life and increase the risk of developing psychiatric disorders. The underlying molecular mechanisms responsible for these effects remain unclear. Here, we uncover that early life adversity (ELA) in mice leads to social subordination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDementia is a devastating age-related disorder. Its therapy would largely benefit from the identification of susceptible subjects at early, prodromal stages of the disease. To search for such prognostic markers of cognitive impairment, we studied spatial navigation in male BALBc vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Neural Circuits
February 2019
Manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) is a powerful tool for non-invasive whole-brain mapping of neuronal activity. Mn enters active neurons via voltage-gated calcium channels and increases local contrast in T-weighted images. Given the property of Mn of axonal transport, this technique can also be used for tract tracing after local administration of the contrast agent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFManganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) exploits the biophysical similarity of Ca and Mn to map the brain's activity in vivo. However, to what extent different Ca channels contribute to the enhanced signal that MEMRI provides and how Mn dynamics influence Mn brain accumulation after systemic administration of MnCl are not yet fully understood. Here, we demonstrate that mice lacking the L-type Ca channel 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMemory extinction involves the formation of a new associative memory that inhibits a previously conditioned association. Nonetheless, it could also depend on weakening of the original memory trace if extinction is assumed to have multiple components. The phosphatase calcineurin (CaN) has been described as being involved in extinction but not in the initial consolidation of fear learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReconsolidation and extinction are two processes occurring upon memory retrieval that have received great attention in memory research over the last decade, partly due to their purported potential in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Due to their opposite behavioral effects, the two phenomena have usually been considered as separate entities, with few attempts to build a unified view of how both could be produced by similar mechanisms. Based on computational modeling, we have previously proposed that reconsolidation and extinction are behavioral outcomes of the same set of plasticity systems, albeit working at different synapses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) is inhibited, roughly half of the CNS effect of the prototypic endocannabinoid anandamide (AEA) is lost. Therefore, we decided to investigate whether inhibiting this enzyme would influence physiological functions classically described as being under control of the endocannabinoid system. Although 5-LO inhibition by MK-886 reduced lipoxin A4 levels in the brain, no effect was found in the elevated plus maze (EPM), even at the highest possible doses, via i.
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