sex-specific regions of the brain and stress (IMAGE)
Caption
New research finds sex-specific regions of the brain can relieve the detrimental effects of chronic stress in male and female mice. Left: Schematic showing a cortical microcircuit with three types of interneurons expressing somatostatin (SST), parvalbumin (PV) or vasointestinal peptide (VIP) and their distinct patterns of innervation of glutamatergic output neurons (PNs), with thin lines representing axons that send chemical signals and the thicker lines of PNs representing dendrites that receive information. There is selective innervation of the distal ends of PN dendrites by axons of SST neurons. Right: Increased activity of SST neurons by genetically induced disinhibition, on top right, or by chemogenetic activation of SST neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, on bottom right, leads to stress resilience and facilitates the reversal of the detrimental behavioral effects of stress exposure in male but not female mice.
Credit
Bernhard Lüscher / Penn State
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CC BY-NC-ND