Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Feb 11;207(1):112-7.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2009.09.037. Epub 2009 Oct 2.

Role of ventral hippocampal nitric oxide/cGMP pathway in anxiety-related behaviors in rats submitted to the elevated T-maze

A V Calixto  1 , F S Duarte, M Duzzioni, L P Nascimento Häckl, M S Faria, T C M De Lima
Affiliations

Role of ventral hippocampal nitric oxide/cGMP pathway in anxiety-related behaviors in rats submitted to the elevated T-maze

A V Calixto et al. Behav Brain Res. .

Abstract

The L-arginine/nitric oxide (NO)/cGMP pathways have been implicated in the control of a variety of physiological mechanisms and are believed to participate in the modulation of anxiety in the CNS. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of N(G)-nitro-L-arginine-methyl-ester (L-NAME), a non-selective inhibitor of NO synthase (NOS); 7-nitroindazole (7-NI), a preferential inhibitor of neuronal NOS; and sodium nitroprusside (SNP), an NO donor, administered into the ventral hippocampus (VH) of rats submitted to the elevated T-maze (ETM). The ETM, an animal model derived from the elevated plus-maze, allows the measurement of two defensive behavioral responses in the same rat: inhibitory avoidance and escape. Results showed that L-NAME and 7-NI impaired the acquisition of inhibitory avoidance and prolonged escape latency in the ETM, suggesting an anxiolytic-like and panicolytic-like effect, respectively. SNP facilitated the acquisition of inhibitory avoidance without interfering with escape performance, suggesting an anxiogenic-like effect. Treatment with methylene blue did not alter per se any of the behavioral responses measured in the ETM, but blocked the effect promoted by SNP. Thus, altogether these results suggest that NO in the VH is critically involved in the modulation of defensive behavior of rats exposed to the ETM.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

MeSH terms