BIPN 154 Final

You have two mice, one with no lesions and one with lesions in the PVN of the hypothalamus. You give them an electric foot shock and then let them out into an open field test. What are you likely to see?

The non-lesioned mouse has a higher increase in cortisol levels.

A genetically modified mouse cannot express GR (glucocorticoid receptors). Compared to another mouse that cannot express MR (mineralocorticoid receptors) what is expected to change in the feedback mechanism for cortisol?

Negative feedback is suppressed.

The zookeeper always gives 3 bananas to the monkeys in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. One day, he gave the monkeys 4 bananas in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. How would the monkey's VTA dopamine neurons' activity change on that day?

Higher in the morning, lower in the afternoon

You decide to study if activation of stress pathways can create an increase in expression of Protein X in a brain area of interest. How might you design an experiment to test this in mice?

Apply stress in a group of mice, sacrifice them, and perform immunohistochemistry to measure protein X expression in a brain area of interest.

How would you study whether a neural population encodes positive and negative valence?

Optogenetic real-time place preference assay

Which hormones are released by our nervous system in stressful situations that prepare an individual for fight or flight?

Norepinephrine

(TRUE or FALSE) It is proposed that the subpopulation of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic neurons projecting to the medial part of nucleus accumbens preferentially encode the aversive information rather than rewarding information.

False

The activation of basolateral amygdala (BLA) has been implicated with the increase in the cortisol level via stimulation of HPA axis.

True

The activation of mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) increase the hippocampal neuronal activity, while the activation of glucocorticoid receptor (GR) suppress the activity of these neurons.

True

During the onset of the stress reaction, the low level of cortisol release into blood will rapidly activate (______________), which enhance the attention to novel sensory information. Further increase in cortisol will activate the (_______________) in (__________________).

1. mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)

2. glucocorticoid receptor (GR)

3. Cytosolic Area

One of the physiological response to stress is to generate energy to cope with stress. In response to acute stress, (_____________) released from the (________________) will activate the (____________________) mediated signaling to increase the level of (______________) in blood.

Epinephrine, adrenal medulla, adrenergic receptor, glucose

Why can glucocorticoids reach virtually all cells in the body?

They travel through the bloodstream and are steroids, which enables them to cross a nonpolar cell membrane.

During fear learning, _______ is the major brain region that receives CS information from _______ and US information from ______, where long-term ________ happens

Lateral amygdala, auditory cortex, somatosensory cortex, potentiation

Social Defeat Stress is a good rodent model of depression. Increased adrenocorticotropin hormone and corticosterone were observed after stress. Also, susceptible animals were observed displaying _______ time in interaction zone and _______ sucrose preference, indicating its good _______ validity. Moreover, depressive behaviors induced by this protocol can be reversed by chronic antidepressant administration, indicating its good ______ validity.

Decreased, decreased, face, predictive

In this experiment, what are the unconditioned and conditioned stimuli (US and CS, respectively)?

US is the foot shock; CS is the flashing blue light

The student repeats this experiment with two mouse groups: Mice in Group A receive the foot shock while blue lights flash, and mice in Group B receive the same thing but their NMDA receptors in the LA are blocked. How might you expect these mice to differ in terms of freezing behavior in the presence of the conditioned stimulus alone?

Group B will freeze less than Group A.

The student now wants the mice to unlearn the association between the US and CS. What is this process called?

Extinction

Which of the following are NOT USUALLY associated with depression?

Auditory or visual hallucinations

You found a novel brain region A that lies adjacent to the amygdala and plays the same role as CeM. Which of the following is the most likely observation during your fear conditioning experiment?

Inject NpHR into region A, and when the yellow light was turned on, the animals showed less freezing

What is the common neural adaptations observed in mice exposed to chronic restraint stress (CRS) and in mice showing susceptible phenotype in response to chronic social defeat stress (CSDS)?

Decreased excitatory inputs to D1-like dopamine receptor expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-MSNs) in nucleus accumbens (NAc)???

Choose the right combination of filter sets

1: 435/20 2: 480/20 3: 545/20

What will happen if CFP-tagged X (X-CFP) and YFP-tagged Y (Y-YFP) bind to each other?

Emission from CFP results in excitation of YFP

If Drug-A induces the binding of protein CFP-tagged X (X-CFP) and protein YFP-tagged Y (Y-YFP), how will the intensity of the individual fluorescent proteins change?

Intensity of YFP will be increased while the intensity of CFP will be reduced

The activity of brain area called lateral habenula (LHb) is reduced in mice exposed to the chronic restraint stress (CRS), but this decreased activity is rescued by ketamine treatment.

False

In mice model of chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) induced depression, the neural activity of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic neurons projecting to nucleus accumbens (NAc) is selectively increased in susceptible animals.

True

When you optogenetically inhibit the projection from A to B, you also found the strong freezing behaviors. This strongly implies that the projections from A to B are ( _____________), and the activation of A-to-B projection may be ( ________________).

Glutamatergic / anxiolytic