Chronic stress alters synaptic terminal structure in hippocampus

Chronic stress alters synaptic terminal structure in hippocampus.

Repeated psychosocial or restraint stress causes atrophy of apical dendrites in CA3 pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus, accompanied by specific cognitive deficits in spatial learning and memory. Excitatory amino acids mediate this atrophy together with adrenal steroids and the neurotransmitter serotonin. Because the mossy fibers from dentate granule neurons provide a major excitatory input to...

Pre-synaptic Terminal Dynamics in the Hippocampus

Acute Physiological Stress Promotes Clustering of Synaptic Markers and Alters Spine Morphology in the Hippocampus

GluA2-containing AMPA receptors and their association with protein kinase M zeta (PKMζ) and post-synaptic density-95 (PSD-95) are important for learning, memory and synaptic plasticity processes. Here we investigated these synaptic markers in the context of an acute 1h platform stress, which can disrupt spatial memory retrieval for a short-term memory on the object placement task and long-term ...

Computational Analysis of the Impact of Chronic Stress on Intrinsic and Synaptic Excitability in the Hippocampus

Dendritic atrophy and impaired long-term synaptic potentiation (LTP) are hallmarks of chronic stress-induced plasticity in the hippocampus. It has been hypothesized that these disparate structural and physiological correlates of stress lead to hippocampal dysfunction by reducing postsynaptic dendritic surface, thereby adversely affecting the availability of synaptic inputs and suppressing LTP. ...

Prenatal stress alters Fos protein expression in hippocampus and locus coeruleus stress-related brain structures.

Prenatal stress (PS) durably influences responses of rats from birth throughout life by inducing deficits of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis feedback. The neuronal mechanisms sustaining such alterations are still unknown. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether in PS and control rats, the exposure to a mild stressor differentially induces Fos protein in hippocampu...