Gonadectomy in adult life increases tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity in the prefrontal cortex and decreases open field activity in male rats
Section snippets
Animal subjects
Ninety-seven adult male Sprague–Dawley rats (Taconic Farms, Germantown, NY) were used. All procedures involving animals are approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, SUNY at Stony Brook, and minimize the use of animals and their discomfort. In initial anatomical studies, five sham-operated and five gonadectomized animals were examined at each of seven post-surgical time-points. Two additional cohorts of animals were used to analyse the anatomical effects of acute and chronic
Efficacy of hormone treatments
The surgical procedures and hormone replacement methods used in this study have been utilized in numerous investigations to reduce and restore physiological levels of circulating testicular hormones.[12]The efficacy of these methods was confirmed in this study by weighing the androgen-sensitive bulbospongiosus muscles (Table 1). This measure is a proven, sensitive assay for circulating androgens in rats.[70]Similar to previous results,[12]bulbospongiosus muscle mass was less than control
Discussion
Prefrontal cortical functioning in rats, monkeys and man show striking sex differences. The hormone influence suggested in these may hold significance both for the biology of complex cognitive functions, and for the prefrontal cortical dysfunction seen in disorders such as schizophrenia which often show sex differences in incidence, course or outcome.24, 56The present evaluation of TH immunoreactivity in the prefrontal cortex of hormonally intact, gonadectomized and gonadectomized and
Conclusions
The present analyses, carried out in male rats gonadectomized as adults, with and without supplementation with testosterone proprionate, and examined two days to 10 weeks after surgery, revealed that both the anatomical organization of prefrontal catecholamine afferents, and a behavioral measure sensitive to their selective lesioning remain highly responsive to changes in testicular hormones in adulthood. This hormone modifiability of prefrontal catecholamines and the possibility for behavioral
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by a Dean's Grant, SUNY at Stony Brook School of Medicine (MFK) and by a FIRST Award R29NS35422 (MFK).
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