Insulin-deficient diabetic rats are markedly hyperphagic when fed a high-carbohydrate (HC) diet, but normophagic when fed a high-fat (HF) diet. When maintained on a HC diet, diabetic rats also exhibit increased gene expression of the orexigenic peptide neuropeptide Y (NPY) in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus, and reduced expression of the anorectic peptide corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) ...

Forebrain activation patterns in normal and spinal-injured Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were determined by measuring regional cerebral blood flow as an indicator of neuronal activity. Data are compared to our previously published findings from normal and spinal-injured Long-Evans (LE) rats and reveal a striking degree of overlap, as well as differences, between strains in the basal (unstimulated) f...

Hypoxia-sensitive peripheral carotid chemoreceptors, which regulate sympathetic outflow from the brain stem, are promising antihypertensive treatment targets. However, central nervous pathways integrating human chemoreflexes poorly understood. We combined high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging with physiological profiling to elucidate hypothalamic and medullary responses acute hy...

The transneuronal tracer pseudorabies virus was used to test the hypothesis that connections from the cervix to the forebrain and hypothalamus are maintained with pregnancy. The virus was injected into the cervix of nonpregnant or pregnant mice, and, after 5 days, virus-labeled cells and fibers were found in specific forebrain regions and, most prominently, in portions of the hypothalamic parav...

Estrogen and progestin receptors (ER, PgR) play a critical role in the regulation of neuroendocrine functions in females. The neuroanatomical distribution of the recently cloned, ER , overlaps with both ER and PgR. To determine whether ER is found within ER or PgR-containing neurons in female rat, we used dual label immunocytochemistry. ER immunoreactivity (ER -ir) was primarily detected in the...

Several lines of evidence suggest that the hypothalamus is involved in trigeminal pain processing. However, the organization of descending hypothalamic projections to the spinal trigeminal nucleus caudalis (Sp5C) remains poorly understood. Microinjections of the retrograde tracer, fluorogold (FG), into the Sp5C, in rats, reveal that five hypothalamic nuclei project to the Sp5C: the paraventricu...

Depression and anxiety can be severely detrimental to the health of both the affected woman and her offspring. In a rodent model of postpartum depression and anxiety, chronic social stress exposure during lactation induces deficits in maternal care and increases anxiety. Here, we extend previous findings by expanding the behavioral analyses, assessing lactation, and examining several neural sys...

Duan, Yu-Fei, Irwin J. Kopin, and David S. Goldstein. Stimulation of the paraventricular nucleus modulates firing of neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract. Am. J. Physiol. 277 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 46): R403–R411, 1999.—The present study assessed whether the baroreflex inhibition elicited by electrical stimulation of the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) involve...

Microbiota are micro-organisms that colonize the internal and external surfaces of the body and contribute to developmental processes and the microbiota-gut-brain axis, thereby to the high comorbidity between mental and gastrointestinal diseases. Recent evidence suggests that the gut microbiota influence the expression of vasopressin (AVP), a neuropeptide that mediates anxiety, stress and sickn...