The Role of the Rodent Insula in Anxiety
Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2019 papers
Abstract
The human insula has been consistently reported to be overactivated in all anxiety disorders, activation which has been suggested to be proportional to the level of anxiety and shown to decrease with effective anxiolytic treatment. Nonetheless, studies evaluating the direct role of the insula in anxiety are lacking. Here, we set out to investigate the role of the rodent insula in anxiety by either inactivating different insular regions via microinjections of glutamatergic AMPA receptor antagonist CNQX or activating them by microinjection of GABA receptor antagonist bicuculline in rats, before measuring anxiety-like behavior using the elevated plus maze. Inactivation of caudal and medial insular regions induced anxiogenic effects, while their activation induced anxiolytic effects. In contrast, inactivation of more rostral areas induced anxiolytic effects and their activation, anxiogenic effects. These results suggest that the insula in the rat has a role in the modulation of anxiety-like behavior in rats, showing regional differences; rostral regions have an anxiogenic role, while medial and caudal regions have an anxiolytic role, with a transition area around bregma +0.5. The present study suggests that the insula has a direct role in anxiety.
Related Papers
- → Elevated plus maze protocol v1(2022)2 cited
- → Ethopharmacological analysis of behaviour of rats using variations of the elevated plus-maze(1997)117 cited
- → Anxiogenic properties of cocaine in the rat evaluated with the elevated plus-maze(1992)107 cited
- Augmentation of the NO-cGMP cascade induces anxiogenic-like effect in mice.(2003)
- Combined Application of Bicuculline and 4-Aminopyridine-Induced Epileptiform Activity are Resistant to Conventional Anticonvulsants and AMPA in Young Rat Visual Cortex(2006)