O efeito da injeção intracerebroventricular de neuropeptídeo S na expressão de Fos em núcleos dos circuitos de medo em camundongo Swiss

Abstract

Fear and anxiety are emotions featured by a group of physiological and behavioral changes that occur when subjects feel threatened physically and/or psychologically. For the last two decades many studies have showed that different sources of fear are able to activate different neural pathways, where conditioned (learned) and unconditioned (innate) fear run over different trails. The conditioned fear involves the frontal medial cortex and the central and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala, when the fear of predator (unconditioned) involves nuclei of the medial hypothalamus. It is known that the brain functions are coordinated by neurotransmitter's systems and its receptors that are expressed in many different places around the brain, having different functions. The Neuropeptide S (NPS) is a neurotransmitter whose studies have showed its important role as an anxiety and awake regulator. NPS decreases anxiety and increases awakeness and locomotor behavior, been thus an anxiolytic and stimulating neurotransmitter, what makes it a potential target for pharmacological and clinical studies. In the present work we injected NPS icv in mice and looked for the Fos-expressing neurons in the nuclei of the conditioned and unconditioned pathways. The analysis of our results showed that the icv NPS promoted the increase in Fos expression in the central and basolateral amygdala, what indicates its role in the conditioned fear.