Other areas such as the central amygdala did not group around any factor. The finding GSK1120212 that an important number of activated areas grouped around specific factors is suggestive of activation of partially independent brain circuits. Surprisingly, a minor contribution of novelty-induced activity and anxiety traits on brain activation induced by AMPH was found. It is possible that normal variability in these traits is poorly related to the effects of AMPH or that c-fos expression

is not a good tool to reveal such differences. (C) 2010 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Reward-mediated associative learning is important for recognizing the significance of environmental cues. Such learning involves convergence of multimodal sensory inputs with circuits involved in affective and memory processes. Dopamine-dependent plasticity in the striatum plays a pivotal role, but the wider circuits engaged in cue-reward association are poorly understood. To identify candidate structures that may be of particular interest selleck screening library for further detailed electrophysiological

and functional analysis, we quantified c-Fos expression in a selection of brain structures. c-Fos is a well-known marker of cell activation with additional potential importance for synaptic plasticity. We compared c-Fos expression between animals exposed to 100 pairings of a novel conditioned stimulus with a subsequent reward, and control animals exposed to the same number of cues and rewards, but where the cues and rewards occurred at random with respect to each other. We found significant increases in c-Fos expression in the superior colliculus in the group exposed to cue-reward pairing. This is consistent with

previous recordings in conscious animals, showing modulation of phasic visual responses of single collicular neurons depending on their association with reward. Further, the data also suggest the possibility Selleckchem BX-795 that the thalamic paraventricular nucleus and septal nuclei may be selectively activated during cue-reward association learning. Little is known of the neurophysiological responses in these structures during such tasks, so the present results suggest they would be targets of interest for future single-neuron recording experiments, designed to confirm whether the neurons show learning-specific modulation. (C) 2010 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The amygdala is enriched with histochemically reactive zinc, which is dynamically coupled with neuronal activity and co-released with glutamate.