Topic: SCH23390

Acute stress, as a protective mechanism to respond to an aversive stimulus, can be often accompanied by suppressing pain perception via promoting consistent burst firing of dopamine neurons. Besides, sensitive and advanced research techniques led to the recognition of the mesohippocampal dopaminergic terminals, particularly in the two hippocampal regions, CA1 and dentate gyrus (DG). Previous studies have shown that dopamine receptors within these two hippocampal regions play a critical role in antinociceptive responses induced by forced swim stress (FSS) in the presence of inflammatory pain. S

Interactions between conspecifics trigger the release of dopamine (DA), primarily from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) into the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc), promoting pleasure and positive reinforcement. Disruptions in DA levels can impact social motivation, potentially decreasing responsiveness to social reward and increasing the risk for social anxiety disorder.Using the social fear conditioning (SFC) paradigm, we investigated how DA regulates social motivation and its role in processing social fear. Our approach combined behavioural pharmacology and molecular techniques focusing on the VTA and