The paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) projects to the central nucleus of the amygdala and recent experimental evidence indicates a role for the PVT in conditioned fear. Furthermore, the PVT contains a high density of orexin receptors and fibers and acute injections of orexin antagonist into the PVT produce anxiolytic effects. The present study was done to determine if administration...

the rostral ventromedial medulla (rvm) acts a key role in the descending inhibitory pain modulation. neuropeptide orexin-a (orxa) is confined to thousands of neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (lh). while rvm gets the orexinergic projections, the orexin receptors are also expressed in this structure. the aim of this study was to specify the cellular effects of orxa on rvm neurons in vitro by u...

Orexin-A (a neuropeptide in the hypothalamus) plays an important role in many physiological functions, including the regulation of glucose metabolism. We have previously found that the development of post-ischemic glucose intolerance is one of the triggers of ischemic neuronal damage, which is suppressed by hypothalamic orexin-A. Other reports have shown that the communication system between br...

Aging is associated with a progressive decrease in appetite and food intake. Both A and B orexins, expressed in specific neurons of the lateral hypothalamic area, have been implicated in the regulation of sleep and feeding. In this study, the stimulatory effect of intracerebroventricular administration of the orexins on food intake was compared between young (4-mo-old) and old (25- to 27-mo-old...

Neurophysiologic data suggest that orexin neurons are directly excited by ATP through purinergic receptors (P2XR). Anatomical studies, though reporting P2XR in the hypothalamus, did not describe it in the perifornical hypothalamic area, where orexinergic neurons are located. Here we report the presence of the P2X(2)R subunit in the rat perifornical hypothalamus and demonstrate that hypothalamic...

The peptides orexin-A and -B, the endogenous agonists of the orexin receptors, have similar 19-amino-acid C-termini which retain full maximum response as truncated peptides with only marginally reduced potency, while further N-terminal truncations successively reduce the activity. The peptides have been suggested to bind in an α-helical conformation, and truncation beyond a certain critical len...

Melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) and orexin-A are orexigenic peptidergic neurotransmitters produced primarily in the lateral hypothalamus. Because two other hypothalamic peptides, neuropeptide Y and agouti-related peptide, increase food intake by a mechanism that depends on activation of opioid receptors, we assessed whether MCH or orexin-A also elicits food intake via opioid receptor activa...

Orexins A and B are two hypothalamic peptides that increase food intake and body weight and probably play a role in the sleep regulation. They act through two subtypes of G protein-coupled receptors, called OX1-R and OX2-R. OX1-R selectively binds orexin-A, whereas OX2-R is nonselective for both orexins. Orexins did not affect the in vitro secretion of either catecholamine or aldosterone from h...

introduction: it is known that acute and chronic stress induce hormonal and neuronal changes which affecting both pain threshold and nociceptive behaviours. orexin plays an important role in modulation of pain and stress. considering pain modulation during stress and the role of orexin in pain and stress, orexin might be involved in pain modulation during stress.we evaluated the involvement of ...