Archival ReportGlucocorticoids Protect Against the Delayed Behavioral and Cellular Effects of Acute Stress on the Amygdala
Section snippets
Animals
Male Wistar rats (45–60 days old, 250–300 g) were housed in a 14/10-hour light/dark schedule (lights on at 8 am) with ad libitum access to food and water at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India. The Institutional Animal Ethics Committee approved all procedures related to animal maintenance and experimentation.
Stress
Rats were subjected to a single, 2-hour episode of acute immobilization stress (1) between 10 am and 12 pm in plastic immobilization bags (with no access to food
Injection of Vehicle Alone Alleviates the Delayed Anxiogenic Effects of Acute Stress
As reported previously (1), a single 2 h episode of immobilization stress (Fig. 1A) leads to enhanced anxiety-like behavior 10 days later on the EPM. This delayed anxiogenic effect was exhibited as a reduction in both time spent (Figure 1B) and number of open-arm entries (Figure S1A in Supplement 1). Surprisingly, a single subcutaneous injection of vehicle (Veh inj) 30 min before the same acute stress (Figure 1A, Veh inj + Stress) reversed the delayed increase in anxiety back to control levels
Discussion
While earlier studies on the effects of stress on the brain were largely focused on the hippocampus, more recently developed animal models of PTSD have investigated other brain regions (6, 33, 34), and the literature has been extensively reviewed (5, 35). This study was motivated by clinical observations on two facets of PTSD—one temporal and the other therapeutic. First, although PTSD can be triggered by a single severely stressful event, some components of the affective symptoms persist well
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2023, NeuropharmacologyCitation Excerpt :Single 2 h immobilization stress increases spinal density in principal neurons of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) 10 days after stress, correlating with an increase in anxiety-like behavior. Corticosterone administration in drinking water before stress prevents this increase in spinal density, especially in the proximal region of the dendrite (Rao et al., 2012). Furthermore, corticosterone administration in drinking water 24 h after stress also prevents the increase in spinal density in primary apical dendrites of BLA principal neurons, accompanied by a lower anxiety-like behavior (Chakraborty et al., 2020).