Topic: conditioned place aversion

Re-exposure to drug-associated spatial contexts often provokes drug craving and relapse. The hippocampus plays a critical role in drug associative learning, with a recent study reporting that drug-context associations were encoded in a specific group of CA1 place cells1. In addition to position (P) coding, both head direction (H) and speed (S) coding in the hippocampus2,3 were shown for encoding a given context. These navigational variables can be encoded conjunctively in place cells to support the acquisition of context-specific memories3,4. Contexts associated with either drug rewards or wit

Prenatal pathologies like fetal hypoxia or prenatal stress are increasingly recognized contributors to later-life neuropsychiatric diseases. These pathologies often co-occur, making it challenging to distinguish their individual effects. To address this, we modeled prenatal severe hypoxia (PSH) associated with maternal stress, or prenatal intrauterine ischemia (PII). Both adult PSH and PII rats showed elevated HIF1α levels in the hippocampus (HPC), but only PSH rats exhibited an impaired circadian glucocorticoid rhythm, demonstrating the suitability of both models for the research objectives.C