highly active in rats in the wake of social defeat (a hostile interaction in which the animal has Neuroscience lost a fight with another, dominant rat).
A heated response To examine the role of this region in stress responses, the authors impaired its connec- tion to the DMH in three ways. They blocked
to danger activity throughout the DP/DTT using a chem-
ical inhibitor; they used a virus to kill cells projecting from the DP/DTT to the DMH; and they used a sophisticated genetic approach Dayu Lin to inhibit activity specifically in the projec- Psychological stress can trigger physiological responses, tions that DP/DTT neurons send to the DMH. including an increase in body temperature. A neural circuit In each case, their intervention reduced stress-induced hyperthermia. that underlies this stress-induced heat response has been By contrast, artificial activation of the identified. neuronal projections between the two regions elicited a battery of responses, including increases in heart rate, blood pressure, and You are about to take the stage to speak in pressure, suggesting that DMH–rMR could heat production in brown fat. The group pro- front of a large audience. As you wait, your coordinate various physiological responses vided evidence that the DP/DTT neurons send heart starts to pound, your breathing quick- during stress. excitatory signals to the DMH, and demon- ens, your blood pressure rises and your In humans, psychological stress often strated that the projections from the DP/DTT palms sweat. These physiological responses involves an understanding of complicated terminate close to the DMH cells that, in turn, are evolutionarily conserved mechanisms to situations, and thus probably requires instruc- project to the rMR. Taken together, Kataoka prepare your body to fight against imminent tions from regions of the brain’s cortex, which and colleagues’ experiments support the idea dangers, or to run away quickly. Another key is involved in cognition. In the current study, of a DP/DTT–DMH–rMR–brown fat circuit for response is an increase in body temperature. Kataoka et al. set out to identify the cortical heat production in response to stress (Fig. 1). Emotional stress can cause this psychogenic regions that could send these instructions to How does the stress-related information fever in many mammalian species, from the DMH. As in their previous work, the authors reach the DP/DTT? Further retrograde tracing rodents to humans1,2. What is the neural used retrograde tracers — this time, injected experiments revealed that the strongest mechanism that underlies this phenomenon? into the DMH — to look for neurons that link inputs to the DP/DTT are from the brain’s Writing in Science, Kataoka et al.3 describe a into their heat-generating circuit. They found midline thalamic regions, including the para key neural circuit in psychologically induced that only one, little-studied, region of the ventricular (PVT) and mediodorsal (MD) hyperthermia. cortex was strongly labelled by the tracer. thalamic nuclei. The PVT is highly sensitive to The current work builds on a long legacy of This region, called the dorsal peduncular cor- various physical and psychological stressors, research by the same group, who began their tex and dorsal taenia tecta (DP/DTT), is also such as predator cues and pain6. By contrast, quest for a neuronal circuit that triggers heat production in 2004, using brown fat tissue as an entry point4. Brown fat is a type of ‘good’ fat that can generate heat when needed. Blocking the activity of β3-adrenergic receptor proteins, which are abundant in brown fat and enable the tissue to respond to signals from neurons, PVT/MD rMR attenuates stress-induced hyperthermia5. In the 2004 study, the researchers injected viral ‘retrograde tracers’ into brown fat in rats; the tracers move through connected neurons, allowing the authors to identify brain regions DP/DTT DMH Heat from which neurons project to the fat4. This revealed that neurons in a brainstem area Brown fat called the rostral medullary raphe (rMR) con- nect to brown fat. Later on, the same group identified2 the dorsomedial hypothalamus Figure 1 | Stressful connections. Kataoka et al.3 report that, in rats, a brain region called the dorsal (DMH) as a key brain region upstream of the peduncular cortex and dorsal taenia tecta (DP/DTT) is involved in psychogenic fever — an increase in body rMR. When the authors artificially activated temperature in response to social stress. Stress-related information reaches the DP/DTT from two other the DMH-to-rMR pathway, they found an brain regions: the paraventricular (PVT) and mediodorsal (MD) thalamic nuclei. Neurons from the DP/DTT increase in neuronal activity and heat produc- then project to and excite neurons in the brain’s dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH), which in turn sends tion in brown fat. Unexpectedly, activating this neuronal projections to the rostral medullary raphe (rMR). Finally, neurons from this region connect pathway also increased heart rate and blood indirectly to brown fat tissue, which generates heat.
Inhibition of NR2B Phosphorylation Restores Alterations in NMDA Receptor Expression and Improves Functional Recovery Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Mice (2008)
