It has long been hypothesized that morphological and numerical alterations in dendritic spines underlie long-term structural encoding of experiences. Here we investigate the efficacy of aversive experience in the form of acute immobilization stress (AIS) and chronic immobilization stress (CIS) in modulating spine density in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) of male rats. We find that CIS elicits a...

Interleukin (IL)-6, a cytokine for host defense responses to infection and inflammation, is known to be induced by non-invasive physical or psychological stress, too. To test possible involvement of brain IL-1 in the stress-induced IL-6 production, IL-1 mRNA expression in the hypothalamus, in parallel with blood IL-6 level, was examined in rats subjected to restriction of their movement (immobi...

Stress is known clinically and experimentally to contribute to the development or exacerbation of cardiovascular dysfunction. In an attempt to construct an animal model of stress-induced cardiovascular dysfunction and to understand its mechanisms, the effects of cold-immobilization stress and its cardiovascular consequences were investigated in cardiomyopathic Syrian hamsters (BIO 14.6) and age...

Effects of stress on drug-induced yawning: Constant vs. intermittent stress. PHYSIOL BEHAV 58(1) 181-184, 1995.--Experiment 1 tested whether chronic exposure to immobilization, foot shock or forced swimming would result in suppression of apomorphine-, pilocarpine-, and physostigmine-induced yawning. Immobilization caused suppression of yawning, whereas foot shock and swimming resulted in increa...

Mazzon E, Cuzzocrea S. Role of TNFin ileum tight junction alteration in mouse model of restraint stress. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 294: G1268–G1280, 2008. First published February 28, 2008; doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00014.2008.—Restraint stress induces permeability changes in the small intestine, but little is known about the role of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)in the defects of the TJ fun...

OBJECTIVE This study systematically investigated the effect of chronic stress on the hippocampus and its damage mechanism at the whole genome level. METHODS The rat whole genome expression chips (Illumina) were used to detect gene expression differences in the hippocampus of rats subjected to chronic immobilization stress (daily immobilization stress for 3 h, for 7 or 21 days). The hippocampu...

Rats were subjected to immobilization stress of varying duration and their pain thresholds were recorded. It was seen that stress of lesser duration did not affect the endogenous opioid analgesic system while stressor of longer duration stimulated this system to its maximum irrespective of further increasing the duration of the stress condition even upto two fold.

Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate the effect of immobilization stress on the induction of diabetes mellitus in rats. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study 30 mature male rats with an average weight of 200-220 gr were randomly divided into three groups of ten each. Group I served as the control while the experiment groups were Group II (10 days) and Groups III (30 d...

A growing body of evidence suggests that exercise enhances hippocampal plasticity and function through BDNF up-regulation, which is potentiated by antidepressant treatment. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms mediating the effect of exercise. The present study investigated the effect of treadmill exercise on PI3K/Akt signaling, which mediates synaptic plasticity in the hippo...