HPA Axis Flashcards
What is stress
Actual or anticipated disruption to homeostasis or well being (perturbation to homeostasis)
Types of stress
Systemic/physical: (CV and metabolic) haemorrhage/visceral and somatic pain/ inflammation/malnutrition
Psychogenic/psychological: (social stress) isolation, hierarchy, unemployment
Stress activation in the brain stem
BS:
medullary and SC system - sympathetic NS
nucleus of solitary tract (NTS) - Limbic–>PVN
central pathways regulating the stress response
inputs from higher centres: memory (medial septum/entorhinal cortex/cingulate cortex) & sensory processing (olfactory nuclei/piriform and insurlar cortex)
to… limbic processing: prefrontal cortex/hippocampus/amygdala
how does stress affect the hippocampus
severe deficits in hippocampal dependent object recognition after multi-modal stress
structural neural remodelling (cortisol/glutamate/CRF/trophic factors)
connectomics
Maras PM et al., 2014
increase functional network connectivity between the hippocampus/amygdala/BNST and thalamus (gateway to the cortex) - cause restraint
experimental approaches
- species (rodents) since primates more expensive
- stress (majority acute psychogenic/restraint which is easy to observe/physical)
- pharmacological/surgical manipulation
- optogenetics - activate a specific neuronal population
- DREADDS
- fibre photometry
- gradient-index (GRIN) lens imaging of neural activity via miniture fluorescent microscope
what to measure when studying the HPA axis
- ACTH/glucocorticoid
- CRH/AVP in portal blood (hard to access in rodents then use sheep)
- cfos (gene activation) - marks neuronal population activation
- CRH/AVP/GR/MR glucocorticoid expression receptors
- GRIN lens calcium imaging (observe neuronal firing)
- in vivo studies
HPA axis steps
- stress
- hypothalamus/PVN
releases CRH/AVP - pituitary
releases ACTH - adrenal cortex
releases glucocorticoid
PVN
located at the 3rd ventricle
parvocellular -dorsomedial/autonomic
increased c-fos mRNA during PVN activation in stress (timing is important)
CRH neurons labelled with dTomato –> in stress, there is an increase in c-fos
hypoglycaemic stress increases CRH mRNA in parvocellular PVN /restraint stress activates parvocellular neurons
GCamP inserted into PVN CRH neurons (in-vivo calcium imaging)
Yuan et al., 2019
produces heatmap plot
sucrose = less stress response
shock increases the stress response
what is glucocorticoid feedback
limits prolonged exposure to catabolic and other actions of GC
GC can cause neuropsychiatric pathologies
glucocorticoid receptors
mineralocorticoid (MR) high affinity/basal activation
glucocorticoid (GR) low affinity/high levels needed for binding/activated during stress
MR/GR location
MR in limbic neurons (medial PFC)/amygdala/hippocampus
GR is ubiquitous (highly expressed in the PVN)
responses to GC
genomic (delay) response - MR/GR TF, alters gene expression >30mins
non genomic (fast) response - membrane localised, mediated by secondary effectors (modulate ion channels, R,NT) 1-2 mins