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Prefrontal cortical regions. Three regions of interest are depicted on a hemisected coronal tissue section from squirrel monkey brain
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Background
Stress is a recognized risk factor for mood and anxiety disorders that occur more often in women than men. Prefrontal brain regions mediate stress coping, cognitive control, and emotion. Here, we investigate sex differences and stress effects on prefrontal cortical profiles of gene expression in squirrel monkey adults.
Methods
Dorsolate...
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Positive self-evaluation is a major psychological resource modulating stress coping behavior. Sex differences have been reported in self-esteem as well as stress reactions, but so far their interactions have not been investigated. Therefore, we investigated sex-specific associations of self-esteem and stress reaction on behavioral, hormonal and neu...
Citations
... We investigated the expression levels of NA receptor genes in the mPFC between postpartum and virgin females. Stress amplifies sex differences in gene expression profiles in the prefrontal cortex [40]. Males were excluded from this analysis to avoid picking out NA receptors whose expression levels change due to sex differences. ...
The prevalence of depression in women increases during the postpartum period. We previously reported that subchronic exposure to social stress decreased passive coping in postpartum female mice. This study aimed to investigate whether noradrenaline regulation might regulate coping styles in mice. We first determined whether a different type of stress, subchronic physical stress, decreases passive coping in postpartum females. Postpartum female, virgin female, and male mice were exposed to subchronic restraint stress (restraint stress for 4 h for 5 consecutive days). Subchronic restraint stress decreased passive coping in postpartum females but not in virgin females and males in the forced swim and tail suspension tests. We next examined the neuronal mechanism by which subchronic stress decreases passive coping in postpartum female mice. Neuronal activity and expression of noradrenergic receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were analyzed using immunohistochemistry and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction, respectively. The mPFC was manipulated using chemogenetics, knockdown, or an α2A adrenergic receptor (AR) antagonist. Immunohistochemistry revealed that subchronic restraint stress increased glutamatergic neuron activation in the mPFC via forced swim stress and decreased α2A AR expression in postpartum females. Chemogenetic activation of glutamatergic neurons in the mPFC, knockdown of α2AAR in the mPFC, and the α2A AR receptor antagonist atipamezole treatment decreased passive coping in postpartum females. Subchronic restraint stress decreased passive coping in postpartum females by increasing glutamatergic neuron activity in the mPFC through α2A AR attenuation. The noradrenergic regulation of the mPFC may be a new target for treating postpartum depression.
... The results of the meta-analysis, which included the data of 40,550 adults, show that the respondents who undertook systematic physical activity, compared to women and men with moderate and low activity, were less likely to develop mental disorders. The highest risk group was those who led a sedentary lifestyle [66], while the level of physical activity, physical fitness, mental health, cognitive processes and the quality of functioning in social interactions were higher in men than in women [67][68][69][70]. ...
Since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a serious crisis in many countries around the world, it is important to conduct empirical research aimed at identifying risks and factors protecting the functioning of people affected by it. For this reason, the goals of the present research were to determine the level of physical activity and the severity of symptoms characteristic of mental disorders, cognitive disorders and the quality of social functioning, as well as the structure of the relationship between physical activity and psychosocial functioning of 226 women and 226 men during the COVID-19 epidemic in Eastern Poland. The research was conducted using the IPAQ-SF Questionnaire, GHQ-28 Questionnaires, TUS Test-6/9 version, the original SFS Scale and a self-developed sociodemographic survey. The collected data indicate that women as compared to men show lower levels of weekly physical activity, walking, moderate activity, vigorous activity and quality of functioning in family relationships, but higher severity of mental health disorders, somatic symptoms, functional disorders, depressive symptoms, cognitive disorders, perceptual work disorders, attention deficits and higher quality of functioning in work relationships. On the other hand, the structural model indicates that physical activity, interacting with mental health disorders and cognitive disorders, is positively associated with the social functioning of the respondents, and gender is the moderator of the occurring dependencies. This suggests that physical activity adapted to the condition of health may be an important component of gender-individualized psychopreventive interventions.
... First, it allows a simulation of the broader effects observed in FASD in a model organism with developmental trajectory that closely parallels that of humans but is temporally faster. In addition, a substantial proportion (but not all) of the St. Kitts C. sabaeus monkeys voluntarily drink moderate or even large quantities of beverage in the absence of dietary restrictions or behavioral training, with population level variance ranging from pathological to abstinent similar to that observed in human studies [33]. ...
... Male vervet monkeys of two age categories [5 months infants (mean 5.6 months ± 0.87 months); 2-year juveniles (mean 26.4 months ± 2.68 months)] and two conditions (FASD, control) were selected for this study (GSE173516). Male vervets were examined exclusively in order to eliminate any biological variance related to sex [33,35,36]. All animals were captive-bred under the care of the Behavioural Science Foundation (St. ...
Background
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are common, yet preventable developmental disorders that stem from prenatal exposure to alcohol. This exposure leads to a wide array of behavioural and physical problems with a complex and poorly defined biological basis.
Molecular investigations to date predominantly use rodent animal models, but because of genetic, developmental and social behavioral similarity, primate models are more relevant. We previously reported reduced cortical and hippocampal neuron levels in an Old World monkey ( Chlorocebus sabaeus ) model with ethanol exposure targeted to the period of rapid synaptogenesis and report here an initial molecular study of this model. The goal of this study was to evaluate mRNA expression of the hippocampus at two different behavioural stages (5 months, 2 years) corresponding to human infancy and early childhood.
Methods
Offspring of alcohol-preferring or control dams drank a maximum of 3.5 g ethanol per kg body weight or calorically matched sucrose solution 4 days per week during the last 2 months of gestation. Total mRNA expression was measured with the Affymetrix GeneChip Rhesus Macaque Genome Array in a 2 × 2 study design that interrogated two independent variables, age at sacrifice, and alcohol consumption during gestation.
Results and discussion
Statistical analysis identified a preferential downregulation of expression when interrogating the factor ‘alcohol’ with a balanced effect of upregulation vs. downregulation for the independent variable ‘age’. Functional exploration of both independent variables shows that the alcohol consumption factor generates broad functional annotation clusters that likely implicate a role for epigenetics in the observed differential expression, while the variable age reliably produced functional annotation clusters predominantly related to development. Furthermore, our data reveals a novel connection between EFNB1 and the FASDs; this is highly plausible both due to the role of EFNB1 in neuronal development as well as its central role in craniofrontal nasal syndrome (CFNS). Fold changes for key genes were subsequently confirmed via q RT-PCR.
Conclusion
Prenatal alcohol exposure leads to global downregulation in mRNA expression. The cellular interference model of EFNB1 provides a potential clue regarding how genetically susceptible individuals may develop the phenotypic triad generally associated with classic fetal alcohol syndrome.
... Previous studies using brain imaging show that DLPFC activity is 266 important for emotional regulation in women (Levesque et al., 2003). Moreover, stress amplifies 267 sex differences in gene expression profiles for prefrontal cortical regions involved in coping with 268 stress and emotion regulation (Lee et al., 2017). Even though the neurobiological mechanisms 269 leading to MDD are not well-characterized, data generated using a variety of paradigms including ...
BACKGROUND
Accumulating evidence indicates that the glutamate system contributes to the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) and suicide. We previously reported higher mRNA expression of glutamate receptors in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of females with MDD.
METHODS
In the current study, we measured the expression of mRNAs encoding glutamate transporters in the DLPFC of MDD subjects who died by suicide (MDD-S, n=51), MDD non-suicide subjects (MDD-NS, n=28), and individuals who did not have a history of neurological illness (CTRL, n=32).
RESULTS
Females but not males with MDD showed higher expression of EAATs and VGLUTs relative to CTRLs. VGLUT expression was significantly higher in the female MDD-S group, relative to the other groups.
LIMITATIONS
This study has limitations common to most human studies, including medication history and demographic differences between the diagnostic groups. We mitigated the effects of confounders by including them as covariates in our analyses.
CONCLUSIONS
We report sex differences in the expression of glutamate transporter genes in the DLPFC of females but not males with MDD. Increased glutamate transporter expression may lead to increased synaptic glutamate, and subsequently neuronal and glial loss in the DLPFC in MDD. These deficits may contribute to lower DLPFC activity, poor problem solving and impaired executive function exhibited in depression and in subjects with suicidal behavior. These data add to the accumulating support for the hypothesis that glutamatergic transmission is dysregulated in MDD and suicide. Glutamate transporters may be novel targets for the development of rapidly acting antidepressant therapies.
... Maturation of oligodendrocytes, the glial cells that produce myelin in the central nervous system, is impacted by early life stress, with persisting effects in adult behavioral phenotypes. 103,104 Prior studies have found an increase in gratio, the ratio of the axonal diameter to the diameter of the entire myelinated fiber, during the adolescent timeframe, more notably in male rodents than in females. 51 It is to be noted that there exists a discrepancy regarding sexual dimorphisms in myelin thickness, 105 yet there remains an abundance of evidence supporting sex-specific differences in the thickness of myelin in rodents. ...
Adolescence is a highly dynamic period of development, which includes the final organizational phases of neural maturation within the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The organizational events of neural pruning and myelination occur in a sex‐specific manner, potentially giving rise to the disparities in mood disorders in adulthood. Due to the extended developmental time period of the PFC, environmental insults, including psychosocial stressors, may play a major role in steering the maturation of this region. In this review, the literature surrounding the sex specific alterations that occur in the PFC in rodent models following adolescent stress will be discussed. This will be complimented by a brief review on the state of human research in PFC sex differences in the development of white matter and cytoarchitecture across the lifespan. Taken together, the impact of developmental psychosocial stress on the circuitry of the PFC and resulting adult phenotypes will be summarized with a focus on the importance of considering sex differences in order to build a better understanding of developmental influences on adult disorders. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This review discusses the impact of developmental psychosocial stress on the circuitry of the prefrontal cortex and resulting adult phenotypes with a focus on the importance of considering sex differences in order to build a better understanding of developmental influences on adult disorders.
... (2013);Myers et al. (2015);Chen et al. (2016);Kirsch and Chechik (2016);Hecker et al. (2017);Lee et al. (2017);Negi and Guda (2017)], but these regions do not directly correspond to brain parcellations typically used in imaging analyses, so precise alignment with imaging data can be difficult. An alternative approach is to use the MNI (or voxel) coordinates of each sample(Goyal et al., 2014;Cioli et al., 2014;French and Paus, 2015;Richiardi et al., 2015;Komorowski et al., 2016;Krienen et al., 2016;Rizzo et al., 2016;Burt et al., 2018;Parkes et al., 2017;Romme et al., 2017;Shin et al., 2018;Anderson et al., 2018;Romero-Garcia et al., 2018b). ...
The recent availability of comprehensive, brain-wide gene expression atlases such as the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) has opened new opportunities for understanding how spatial variations on molecular scale relate to the macroscopic neuroimaging phenotypes. A rapidly growing body of literature is demonstrating relationships between gene expression and diverse properties of brain structure and function, but approaches for combining expression atlas data with neuroimaging are highly inconsistent, with substantial variations in how the expression data are processed. The degree to which these methodological variations affect findings is unclear. Here, we outline a seven-step analysis pipeline for relating brain-wide transcriptomic and neuroimaging data and compare how different processing choices influence the resulting data. We suggest that studies using the AHBA should work towards a unified data processing pipeline to ensure consistent and reproducible results in this burgeoning field.
... The differential transcript levels among male and female subjects of the same species are known as sex-biased gene expression (Grath & Parsch, 2016). Currently, several studies discussed these sex-biased expression profiles for brain regions in humans and nonhuman primates (Bernard et al., 2012;Fukuoka, Sumida, Yamada, Higuchi, & Nakagaki, 2010;Hawrylycz et al., 2015;Lee et al., 2017;Trabzuni et al., 2013), but only one included common marmosets (Reinius et al., 2008). ...
Introduction: The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a small New World monkey, has been widely used as a biological model in neuroscience to elucidate neural cir- cuits involved in cognition and to understand brain dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders. In this regard, the availability of gene expression data derived from next- generation sequencing (NGS) technologies represents an opportunity for a molecular contextualization. Sexual dimorphism account for differences in diseases prevalence and prognosis. Here, we explore sex differences on frontal cortex of gene expression in common marmoset’s adults.
Methods: Gene expression profiles in six different tissues (cerebellum, frontal cortex, liver, heart, and kidney) were analyzed in male and female marmosets. To emphasize the translational value of this species for behavioral studies, we focused on sex-bi- ased gene expression from the frontal cortex of male and female in common marmo- sets and compared to humans (Homo sapiens).
Results: In this study, we found that frontal cortex genes whose expression is male- biased are conserved between marmosets and humans and enriched with “house- keeping” functions. On the other hand, female-biased genes are more related to neural plasticity functions involved in remodeling of synaptic circuits, stress cas- cades, and visual behavior. Additionally, we developed and made available an applica- tion—the CajaDB—to provide a friendly interface for genomic, expression, and alternative splicing data of marmosets together with a series of functionalities that allow the exploration of these data. CajaDB is available at cajadb.neuro.ufrn.br. Conclusion: The data point to differences in gene expression of male and female common marmosets in all tissues analyzed. In frontal cortex, female-biased expres- sion in synaptic plasticity, stress, and visual processing might be linked to biological and behavioral mechanisms of this sex. Due to the limited sample size, the data here analyzed are for exploratory purposes.
... The differential transcript levels among male and female subjects of the same species are known as sex-biased gene expression (Grath & Parsch, 2016). Currently, several studies discussed these sex-biased expression profiles for brain regions in humans and nonhuman primates (Bernard et al., 2012;Fukuoka, Sumida, Yamada, Higuchi, & Nakagaki, 2010;Hawrylycz et al., 2015;Lee et al., 2017;Trabzuni et al., 2013), but only one included common marmosets (Reinius et al., 2008). ...
Introduction
The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a small New World monkey, has been widely used as a biological model in neuroscience to elucidate neural circuits involved in cognition and to understand brain dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders. In this regard, the availability of gene expression data derived from next‐generation sequencing (NGS) technologies represents an opportunity for a molecular contextualization. Sexual dimorphism account for differences in diseases prevalence and prognosis. Here, we explore sex differences on frontal cortex of gene expression in common marmoset's adults.
Methods
Gene expression profiles in six different tissues (cerebellum, frontal cortex, liver, heart, and kidney) were analyzed in male and female marmosets. To emphasize the translational value of this species for behavioral studies, we focused on sex‐biased gene expression from the frontal cortex of male and female in common marmosets and compared to humans (Homo sapiens).
Results
In this study, we found that frontal cortex genes whose expression is male‐biased are conserved between marmosets and humans and enriched with “house‐keeping” functions. On the other hand, female‐biased genes are more related to neural plasticity functions involved in remodeling of synaptic circuits, stress cascades, and visual behavior. Additionally, we developed and made available an application—the CajaDB—to provide a friendly interface for genomic, expression, and alternative splicing data of marmosets together with a series of functionalities that allow the exploration of these data. CajaDB is available at cajadb.neuro.ufrn.br.
Conclusion
The data point to differences in gene expression of male and female common marmosets in all tissues analyzed. In frontal cortex, female‐biased expression in synaptic plasticity, stress, and visual processing might be linked to biological and behavioral mechanisms of this sex. Due to the limited sample size, the data here analyzed are for exploratory purposes.
... Wykazano, iż poziom odczuwanego napięcia jest znacznie silniej powiązany z nasileniem dolegliwości bólowych kręgosłupa odcinka lędźwiowego niż wartość wskaźnika masy ciała (BMI) oraz aktywność fizyczna [6], a w oparciu o model zwierzęcy dowiedziono, iż kluczowym czynnikiem różnicującym profil ekspresji genów w rejonach kory przedczołowej odpowiedzialnych za sprawność radzenia sobie ze z doświadczanym napięciem jest płeć [13]. Podkreśla to potrzebę prowadzenia dalszych badań w tym kierunku, które mogą stanowić podstawę do opracowania skutecznych metod rehabilitacji w zespole bólowym kręgosłupa odcinka lędźwiowego. ...
ABSTRACT
Aim The aim of the research is to determine which styles of coping with stress are crucial for women and men participating in the rehabilitation due to lumbar spine pain syndrome.
Material and methods The sample consisted of 158 patients participating in a 28-day rehabilitation cycle at the Department of General and Neuro Rehabilitation Clinic of Institute of Rural Health in Lublin. The applied research tool was the Coping Inventory For Stressful Situations (CISS) by N. Endler and J. Parker (2005). Statistical analyzes were performed with the IBM SPSS 24 program using the General Linear Model procedure.
Results and conclusions As a result of the performed analyzes, the average effect of the interaction between stress coping styles and gender was obtained. Women and men prefer different styles of coping with stress. Women more often than men use the emotion-oriented style and rarely the avoidant style, while the dominant and gender-independent way of coping with stress is the task – oriented style.
Key words: styles of coping with stress, lumbar spine pain syndrome
