Induction of ΔFosB in Reward-Related Brain Structures after Chronic Stress

By L. Perrotti, Yuki Hadeishi, P. Ulery, M. Barrot, L. Monteggia, R. Duman, E. Nestler. Journal of Neuroscience, 2004

292 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Acute and chronic stress differentially regulate immediate-early gene (IEG) expression in the brain. Although acute stress induces c-Fos and FosB, repeated exposure to stress desensitizes the c-Fos response, but FosB-like immunoreactivity remains high. Several other treatments differentially regulate IEG expression in a similar manner after acute versus chronic exposure. The form of FosB that persists after these chronic treatments has been identified as ΔFosB, a splice variant of the fosB gene. This study was designed to determine whether the FosB form induced after chronic stress is also ΔFosB and to map the brain regions and identify the cell populations that exhibit this effect. Western blotting, using an antibody that recognizes all Fos family members, revealed that acute restraint stress caused robust induction of c-Fos and full-length FosB, as well as a small induction of ΔFosB, in the frontal cortex (fCTX) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). The induction of c-Fos (and to some extent full-length FosB) was desensitized after 10 d of restraint stress, at which point levels of ΔFosB were high. A similar pattern was observed after chronic unpredictable stress. By use of immunohistochemistry, we found that chronic restraint stress induced ΔFosB expression predominantly in the fCTX, NAc, and basolateral amygdala, with lower levels of induction seen elsewhere. These findings establish that chronic stress induces ΔFosB in several discrete regions of the brain. Such induction could contribute to the long-term effects of stress on the brain.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a36c838948005fa5a157233b2e7dfe8945054d00

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Behavioral Neuroscience

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

ΔFosB Induction in Orbitofrontal Cortex Mediates Tolerance to Cocaine-Induced Cognitive Dysfunction (2007, methodology): “All of the FosB-like immunoreactivity seen represented FosB and not full-length FosB, because no staining was found with an antibody selective for the full-length protein (data not shown) (Perrotti et al., 2004).”
Histone deacetylase 5 epigenetically controls behavioral adaptations to chronic emotional stimuli. (2007, unknown): “Similarly, DFosB is induced in the NAc after chronic, but not acute, exposures to several types of stress (Perrotti et al., 2004).”