Online

Aktar, Mahafuza

Neuroscience Graduate Program

2020

M.S.

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.