In vertebrate mammals, distributed neural circuits in the brain are involved in emotion-related behavior. Netrin-G1 is a glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol-anchored synaptic adhesion molecule whose deficiency results in impaired fear-like and anxiety-like behaviors under specific circumstances. To understand the cell type and circuit specificity of these responses, we generated netrin-G1 conditional...

Behavioral profiles are strongly shaped by an individual's whole life experience. The accumulation of negative experiences over lifetime is thought to promote anxiety-like behavior in adulthood ("allostatic load hypothesis"). In contrast, the "mismatch hypothesis" of psychiatric disease suggests that high levels of anxiety-like behavior are the result of a discrepancy between early and late env...

Manipulations of rearing conditions have been used to examine the effects of early experience on adult behavior with varying results. Evidence suggests that postnatal days (PND) 15-21 are a time of particular susceptibility to environmental influences on anxiety-like behavior in mice. To examine this, we subjected C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice to an early handling-like procedure. Pups were separated...

The oxidative imbalance appears to have an important role in anxiety development. Studies in both humans and animals have shown a strong correlation between anxiety and oxidative stress. In humans, for example, the increased malondialdehyde levels and discrepancies in antioxidant enzymes in erythrocytes have been observed. In animals, several studies also show that anxiety-like behavior is rela...

Stress may cause special behavioral and biochemical changes. Kindling is presumed to be the underlying mechanism for such changes. Lamotrigin, an anti-kindling agent which blocks glutamate release through inhibiting sodium channels may reverse these behavioral changes. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of lamotrigin in management of behavioral and biochemical changes caused by st...

Prenatal nicotine exposure over an entire pregnancy has been associated with an increased prevalence of hyperactivity, anxiety-like behavior and depression-like behavior in mature rats. However, the effects of maternal nicotine exposure in late gestation and lactation on the psychology and behavior of adolescent rat offspring are unclear. Thus, we investigated the effect of nicotine exposure du...

Anxiety, like other psychiatric disorders, is a complex neurobehavioral trait, making identification of causal genes difficult. In this study, we examined anxiety-like behavior and fear conditioning (FC) in an F(2) intercross of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice. We identified numerous quantitative trait loci (QTL) influencing anxiety-like behavior in both open field (OF) and FC tests. Many of these QTL...