Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Neuroscience
First Advisor
Sayamwong Hammack
Abstract
Exposure to chronic stressors can produce maladaptive behavioral and physiological consequences. Previous work has demonstrated that chronic variant stress exposure enhances anxiety-like behavior and increases pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) and PAC1 receptor transcripts in the anterolateral bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) in rats. The studies described here demonstrate that treatment with a chronic variant stress paradigm produced anxiety-like behavior in transgenic PACAP-Cre mice. Additionally, the stressed group did not gain weight during the 14 days of chronic stressor exposure compared to control mice. Furthermore, fewer PACAP-expressing neurons were observed in the posterior BNST and lateral hypothalamus following chronic variate stress. In aggregate, these data suggest that chronic stress has behavioral and physiological consequences in mice and that PACAP systems in the posterior BNST and the lateral hypothalamus may play a role in these behavioral changes.
Language
en
Number of Pages
43 p.
Recommended Citation
Aktar, Mahafuza, "Effects Of Chronic Stress On The Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase Activating Polypeptide (pacap) In The Bed Nucleus Of The Stria Terminalis (bnst)" (2020). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 1273.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/1273