Hypothalamic activation after restraint stress and social stress in C57BL/6 mice

• Grant number: 18/24288-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Morphology - Anatomy
• Principal Investigator: Simone Cristina Motta
• Grantee: Alisson Pinto de Almeida
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas (ICB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 16/18667-0 - Manipulating the neural circuit underlying social defense, AP.JP

Abstract

The entrapment is typically related to aversive situations, involving a movement limitation and a situation without the possibility for escape. This can depend on only physical limits, like restraint stress, or more than one type of limits, like social and physical during the social confrontation. We have already demonstrated that, in Wistar male rats, a septohippocampal-hypothalamic path is likely to respond to the environmental boundary, which works for defensive behaviors during different threats, like restraint and social defeat. This path covers the regions juxtadorsomedial of lateral hypothalamic area, and regions of the septohippocampal system, where is located the Boundary vector cells, which codes for environmental boundaries, like a dominant male or tube's walls. In order to understand better defensive behaviors and how this can be modulated by entrapment in C57Bl/6, we intend to analyze if the structure relations with this path is mobilized in response to different threats, as within Wistar. For this, we are going to compare the hypothalamic pattern of activation in C57Bl/6 mice between social defeat and restraint stress, by means of the Fos expression.