Modelling sexual violence in male rats: the sexual aggression test (SxAT).

Sexual assault and rape are crimes that impact victims worldwide. Although the psychosocial and eco-evolutionary factors associated with this antisocial behavior have repeatedly been studied, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are still largely unknown. Here, we established a novel paradigm to provoke and subsequently assess sexual aggression (SxA) in adult male Wistar rats: the sexual aggression test (SxAT).

Estradiol effect on short-term object memory under hypocholinergic condition.

Estrogens positively affect object recognition memory (ORM). However, whether this effect rely on acetylcholine is unknown. Here we investigated if 17β-estradiol (E2) would be able to recover ORM deficits in animals with decreased expression of the Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter (VAChT KD).

Reduced Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter favors antidepressant behaviors and modulates serotonin and dopamine in female mouse brain.

Depression is extremely harmful to modern society. Despite its complex spectrum of symptoms, previous studies have mostly focused on the monaminergic system in search of pharmacological targets. However, other neurotransmitter systems have also been linked to the pathophysiology of depression.

c-Fos expression predicts long-term social memory retrieval in mice.

The way the rodent brain generally processes socially relevant information is rather well understood. How social information is stored into long-term social memory, however, is still under debate. Here, brain c-Fos expression was measured after adult mice were exposed to familiar or novel juveniles and expression was compared in several memory and socially relevant brain areas.