Topic: TRAP2 mice

Individual response to stressful events varies greatly and can impact behavioral and neurological outcomes. Depending on intrinsic and extrinsic factors, active, passive, or maladaptive coping behavior can emerge in the same subject when exposed to different stressors. Rodent stress models such as Learned Helplessness (LH) and Social Defeat Stress (SDS) have been used to uncover a stressor’s impact on behavior and the underlying brain changes. In LH, mice subjected to inescapable shocks can have inappropriate passive behavior or “helplessness”, or continue to exhibit normal escape behavior- "r

Memories are thought to be stored as material changes occurring in sparse, widely distributed populations of neurons known as engrams. This neural plasticity is theorised to promote re-activation of this network of engram cells upon re-exposure to relevant cues, thus leading to memory retrieval. Significant evidence exists to support this theory in relation to highly aversive or rewarding experiences, however less evidence exists to support the existence of engrams for day-to-day learning experiences. Here we used TRAP2 mice to characterize expression patterns and plasticity in neurons activat

The long-acting GLP-1 analogue semaglutide has revolutionized the pharmacological treatment of obesity, but the brain-mediated mechanisms behind the body weight loss and its most common side effect, nausea, remain unclear. By using select delivery of a Cre-dependent viral vector encoding hM3DGq and mCherry into the dorsal vagal complex (DVC) of TRAP2 mice, we here show that neurons in the DVC that are activated by semaglutide have direct projections to a variety of brainstem and forebrain structures involved in appetite regulation and visceral malaise. CNO-mediated re-activation of DVC neurons

To establish brain-wide surveys of the areas and neural circuits involved in sensorimotor learning, we have begun to investigate mice designed for targeted recombination in active populations (Fos[2A-iCreER], TRAP2 mice) enabling activity-dependent expression of a Cre-dependent fluorescent reporter within a specific time window. As a first test, we exposed TRAP2 mice to a novel enriched environment after trimming of all whiskers but one and observed a significant increase in the number of TRAPed cells in the barrel cortex compared to control mice. Moreover, minimal expression of the fluorescen