Identification of a role for the ventral hippocampus in neuropeptide S-elicited anxiolysis.

ABSTRACT: Neuropeptide S (NPS) increasingly emerges as a potential novel treatment option for anxiety diseases like panic and posttraumatic stress disorder. However, the neural underpinnings of its anxiolytic action are still not clearly understood. Recently, we reported that neurons of the ventral hippocampus (VH) take up intranasally administered fluorophore-conjugated NPS and, moreover, that application of NPS to mouse brain slices affects neurotransmission and plasticity at hippocampal CA3-CA1 synapses. Although these previous findings define the VH as a novel NPS target structure, they leave open whether this brain region is directly involved in NPS-mediated anxiolysis and how NPS impacts on neuronal activity propagation in the VH. Here, we fill this knowledge gap by demonstrating, first, that

SUBMITTER: Dine J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3610821 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature