Effects of Maternal Voluntary Wheel Running During Pregnancy on Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis, Temporal Order Memory, and Depression-Like Behavior in Adult Female and Male Offspring

Research suggests that maternal exercise in pregnancy may have beneficial effects on the brain function of offspring. This study sought to determine if voluntary wheel running during pregnancy improves depression-like behavior, temporal order memory, and hippocampal neurogenesis in both female and male offspring mice. Pregnant mice were allowed to run voluntarily by introducing running wheels into the housing cages throughout the gestational period. Male and female mice offspring at the age of 8- to 9-week-old were then tested on the temporal order task and forced swim test, then euthanized for immunostaining for examining adult hippocampal cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. Results showed that both male and female pups had reduced depression-like behavior, while only male offspring demonstrated improvement in temporal order memory. Immunostaining revealed that male offspring showed an increase in the number of immature neurons in the ventral hippocampus, whereas female offspring showed enhanced cell proliferation in the dorsal hippocampus. These findings indicate that maternal voluntary wheel running benefits both female and male offspring on reducing depression-like behavior, but with gender effect on promoting hippocampal cell proliferation, neuronal differentiation, and temporal order memory

Efeito agudo de diferentes parâmetros de estimulação elétrica cerebral profunda unilateral na amígdala sobre o comportamento de ratos

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociências, Florianópolis, 2018.As doenças psiquiátricas são a principal causa de incapacidade em todo mundo. Apesar do elevado fardo social e econômico associado a estes transtornos, pouco se tem avançado em termos de tratamento. A estimulação cerebral profunda (ECP) é uma alternativa cirúrgica para modulação elétrica de estruturas profundas do sistema nervoso central, tendo sido amplamente utilizada no tratamento dos sintomas da doença de Parkinson através da estimulação do núcleo subtalâmico e globo pálido interno. A ECP da amígdala, estrutura central vinculada aos circuitos de defesa, foi recentemente proposta como alternativa terapêutica no tratamento de transtornos associados a estresse e ansiedade. O desenvolvimento de protocolos de estimulação mais específicos e eficientes é uma das principais necessidades no que se refere a ECP em neuropsiquiatria. Dessa forma, o presente estudo teve por objetivo investigar o efeito agudo da ECP unilateral da amígdala em duas faixas de frequência (130 e 20 Hz) e três amplitudes de corrente (10, 50 e 100 µA) sobre o comportamento de ratos. Nas condições experimentais utilizadas neste estudo, a ECP não parece acarretar prejuízo tanto sobre a resposta defensiva como sobre a consolidação de memórias aversivas. Como a ECP da amígdala pode ser um recurso terapêutico no tratamento de transtornos associados ao estresse e ansiedade, os dados aqui apresentados contribuem de forma translacional para o aprimoramento do uso clínico da técnica de ECP.Abstract : Psychiatric diseases are the main cause of disability around the world. In spite of the high economic and social burden, the development of new treatments has been slow. The deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a surgically alternative for the modulation of deep central nervous structures, which has been widely used in the treatment of Parkinson s disease symptoms through the stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and internal globus pallidus internus. The DBS of the amygdala, a key structure associated with the defensive system, has recently been proposed in the treatment of stress and anxiety disorders. The development of more specific and efficient stimulation protocols is one of the main necessities regarding the use of DBS in neuropsychiatry. Given so, the present study investigated the acute unilateral amygdala DBS effects using two frequency different bands (130 and 20 Hz) and three diverse current amplitudes (10, 50 e 100 µA) over rats behavior. Under the experimental conditions used, neither defensive behavior nor fear memory consolidation were affected by acute stimulation. As amygdala DBS is a potential therapeutic approach for the treatment of stress and anxiety disorders, these data contributes in a translational fashion for the improvement of the technique

Cognitive performance of long-term institutionalized elderly patients with schizophrenia: A case control study

Abstract Cognitive impairment is inherent to the ageing process. Several studies suggest that patients with late-life schizophrenia have more marked cognitive impairment. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the cognitive performance of elderly institutionalized patients with schizophrenia and institutionalized elderly control patients without neurological or psychiatric diseases, matched for age, educational level and institutionalization time. Methods: The Cambridge Examination for Mental Disorders of the Elderly (CAMCOG) was used to test 10 institutionalized elderly patients with schizophrenia. Results were compared with those of 10 institutionalized control patients with history of Hansen's disease. Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed a worse performance in terms of total CAMCOG score and on its subtests of orientation, language, abstraction, and memory (p≤0.05). Patients with schizophrenia also disclosed a non-significant trend toward lower scores on the MMSE and on calculus. Conclusion: Findings demonstrated that schizophrenia was associated to worse cognitive impairment in long-term institutionalized elderly patients compared with institutionalized patients without neurological or psychiatric diseases

Behavioral and Neurochemical Consequences of Pentylenetetrazol-Induced Kindling in Young and Middle-Aged Rats

(1) Objectives: Epilepsy disorder is likely to increase with aging, leading to an increased incidence of comorbidities and mortality. In spite of that, there is a lack of information regarding this issue and little knowledge of cognitive and emotional responses in aging subjects following epileptogenesis. We investigated whether and how aging distress epilepsy-related behavioral and biochemical outcomes are associated with cognition and emotion. (2) Methods: Young and middle-aged Wistar rats (3 or 12 months old) were treated with pentylenetetrazol (PTZ, 35 mg/kg) and injected on alternated days for 20 (young rats) and 32 days (middle-aged rats). Kindling was reached after two consecutive stages 4 plus one stage 5 or 6 in Racine scale. Control and kindled rats were evaluated in the elevated plus-maze (EPM) and object-recognition tests and their hippocampus was collected 24 h later for mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) dosage. (3) Results: Middle-aged rats presented a higher resistance to develop kindling, with a decrease in the seizure severity index observed following the 4th and 9th PTZ injections. Middle-aged rats displayed an increased duration of the first myoclonic seizure and an increased latency to the first generalized seizure when compared to younger rats. The induction of kindling did not impair the animals’ performance (regardless of age) in the object-recognition task and the EPM test as well as it did not alter the hippocampal levels of MAPKs. (4) Significance: Our findings reveal that, despite age-related differences during epileptogenesis, middle-aged rats evaluated after kindling performed similarly during discriminative learning and emotional tasks in comparison to young animals, with no alteration of hippocampal MAPKs. Additional investigation must be carried out to explore the electrophysiological mechanisms underlying these responses, as well as the long-term effects displayed after kindling