Hippocampal Dendritic Spines are Resistant to the Detrimental Effects of Stress during Motherhood
Loading...
Date
2012-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Motherhood is a time accompanied by reductions in the neuroendocrine and emotional responses to stress as well as a resistance to stress-induced deficits in hippocampal-dependent learning. These changes may be mediated by structural plasticity in the hippocampus, a brain region that has been linked to stress, learning, and anxiety regulation. Dendritic spines, sites of excitatory synapses, are one aspect of hippocampal structure that may provide a cellular substrate for altered stress responsiveness during motherhood. To begin investigating this possibility, we examined the influence of stress on dendritic spines in the postpartum hippocampus. Virgin (i.e. female rats without reproductive experience) and postpartum female rats were subject to 20 min of inescapable swim stress and sacrificed 24 hr after stressor exposure along with unstressed controls. Brains were processed using Golgi impregnation and dendritic spine density analyzed on apical and basal dendrites of pyramidal neurons in the dorsal and ventral regions of area CA1 in the hippocampus. We show that in the ventral hippocampus, exposure to acute stress diminished dendritic spine density in virgin, but not postpartum, females. Acute stress had no effect on dendritic spines in the dorsal hippocampus of virgin or postpartum females, although mothers had more dendritic spines as compared to virgins. These data suggest that during motherhood, the hippocampus is resilient to the detrimental effects of stress which may contribute to other stress-related adaptations during this time.
Description
1st place at Undergraduate Research Colloquium
2nd place at Denman Research Forum
2nd place at Denman Research Forum
Keywords
Behavioral Neuroscience, Motherhood