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Influence of the ventral hippocampal formation on plasma vasopressin, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and behavioral responses to novel acoustic stress

Academic Article
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Overview

authors

  • Nettles, Kendall
  • Pesold, C.
  • Goldman, M. B.

publication date

  • March 2000

journal

  • Brain Research  Journal

abstract

  • The ventral hippocampal formation (vHF) seems to constrain diverse responses to psychological stimuli, and disruption of this function may underlie severe neuropsychiatric diseases. In particular, the ventral subiculum inhibits hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity following psychological, but not systemic, stressors. Despite the difficulty in interpreting such HPA responses, they have been relied upon to further characterize vHF function, because increased HPA axis activity is implicated in neuropsychiatric disturbances, and reliance on behavioral and cognitive data is even more problematic. Plasma arginine vasopressin (pAVP), which is inhibited by psychological stimuli and is also implicated in diverse neuropsychiatric diseases, provides a less ambiguous measure of CNS function. To test if its inhibition by psychological stress is also mediated by the vHF, we conducted two studies. In the first, pAVP and behavioral responses to novel acoustic stress were assessed in rats with bilateral excitotoxic lesions of the ventral subiculum and the ventral hippocampus. The subiculum lesions blocked the fall in pAVP and enhanced escape behaviors, whereas the hippocampal lesions produced responses intermediate to those in the subiculum-lesioned and control rats. In the second study, the pAVP response was similarly blocked by small lesions restricted to those vHF subfields which project to the neuroendocrine hypothalamus, compared to the response in animals with lesions in other vHF subfields. These results indicate that discrete projections from the vHF inhibit the pAVP response to psychological stimuli, and suggest that pAVP may provide a reliable probe of vHF activity.

subject areas

  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Adrenocorticotropic Hormone
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Animals
  • Arginine Vasopressin
  • Behavior, Animal
  • Corticosterone
  • Gliosis
  • Hematocrit
  • Hippocampus
  • Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System
  • Ibotenic Acid
  • Male
  • Microinjections
  • Osmolar Concentration
  • Pituitary-Adrenal System
  • Rats
  • Rats, Sprague-Dawley
  • Reflex, Startle
  • Stress, Psychological
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Research

keywords

  • HPA axis
  • SIADH
  • hippocampal formation
  • rats
  • schizophrenia
  • vasopressin
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Identity

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0006-8993

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1016/s0006-8993(99)02281-7

PubMed ID

  • 10700613
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Additional Document Info

start page

  • 181

end page

  • 190

volume

  • 858

issue

  • 1

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