Topic: running wheel

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) encompassing dopaminergic (DA) neurons, is a brain region crucial for processing information about various rewards and guiding appetitive behaviours directed towards them. Importantly, how the VTA DA neurons encode different rewards and to what extent this information overlaps within different DA cells is poorly understood.For that reason, we recorded the electrophysiological activity of VTA neurons in freely-behaving male mice using silicon probes while the animals were free to spontaneously explore different rewards. The arena contained several natural reward

Effort-related symptoms, such as anergia and fatigue, play a central role in many psychopathologies and neurological diseases. The mesolimbic dopamine (DA) pathway projecting to nucleus accumbens, (NAcb) modulates behavioral activation and effort exertion. Depletion of DA levels in Nacb leads to anergia and influences choices toward less effortful demanding options. DA function seems to be diminished with age. Our laboratory has developed behavioral tasks for rodents, including the PROG/sucrose task, for the study of effort-related choices linked to DA signaling in NAcb. Male Wistar rats of di

In this study, our objective was to explore the role of GABAA receptors within the amygdala region in modulating anxiety-like behavior in response to voluntary physical activity. We employed a stereotaxic instrument to implant two cannulae in the amygdala area, through which we administered the GABAA receptor antagonist, bicuculline. Subsequently, we exposed the animals to a running wheel for a duration of three hours over four weeks. Following this exercise regimen, we conducted behavioral tests, including the open field and elevated plus maze tests, to assess anxiety-like behavior. The findi

Aims: Post-injury physical exercise can reduce memory deficits associated to traumatic brain injury (TBI) in late adolescent and young adult rats, but both the effectiveness of this treatment and possible sex-dependent effects in late middle-aged injured rats are important issues still unsolved. The aim of the present work was to examine whether chronic object recognition memory (ORM) deficits associated to TBI can be alleviated by post-injury physical exercise in males and females late middle-aged rats. Methods: 14 months-old rats were submitted to a controlled cortical impact injury model of