Several behavioral paradigms in rodents produce changes in behavior that resemble symptoms of MOD and these behavioral changes are

sensitive to antidepressant treatments. Here we review two animal models in which MOD-like behavioral changes are elicited by exposure to an acute traumatic event during adulthood, learned helplessness (LH) and conditioned defeat. In LH, exposure of rats to inescapable, but not escapable, tailshock produces a constellation of behavioral changes that include deficits in fight/flight responding and enhanced anxiety-like behavior. In conditioned defeat, exposure of Syrian hamsters to a social defeat by a more aggressive KU55933 purchase animal leads to a loss of territorial aggression and an increase in submissive and defensive behaviors in subsequent encounters with non-aggressive conspecifics. Investigations into the neural substrates that control LH and conditioned defeat revealed that increased 5-HT activity in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) is critical for both models. Other

key brain regions that regulate the acquisition and/or expression of behavior in these two paradigms include the basolateral amygdala (BLA), central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). In this review, we compare and contrast the role of each of these neural structures in mediating LH and conditioned defeat, and discuss the relevance of these data in developing Bucladesine research buy a better understanding of the

mechanisms underlying trauma-related depression.

This article is part of a Special Issue entitled ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Neural activity in the mammalian CNS is determined by both observable processes, such as sensory stimuli or motor output, and covert, internal cognitive processes that cannot be directly observed. We propose methods to identify these cognitive processes by examining the covert structure within the apparent ‘noise’ in spike trains. Contemporary analyses of neural codes include encoding (tuning curves derived from spike trains and behavioral, sensory or motor variables), decoding (reconstructing behavioral, sensory or motor variables from spike trains and hypothesized tuning curves) and generative models (predicting Tideglusib the spike trains from hypothesized encoding models and decoded variables). We review examples of each of these processes in hippocampal activity, and propose a general methodology to examine cognitive processes via the identification of dynamic changes in covert variables.”
“Background: Inflammatory and immune alterations occur and may be relevant in patients with schizophrenia. Chemokines are a subgroup of cytokines that play a major role in the recruitment of determined subsets of leukocytes into tissues. To date no study has evaluated whether levels of chemokines are altered in patients with schizophrenia.