Endocrine Abstracts

It is a well-known observation that glucocorticoid hormones facilitate the storage of stressful, emotional events into memory. How glucocorticoids act in these cognitive processes has still not been completely clarified. Since almost a decade we have been collecting data indicating that memory formation of stressful events involves epigenetic mechanisms coordinating transcriptional processes in dentate gyrus granule neurons. We found that such events evoke the phosphorylation ...

Abstract withdrawn....

Neurons in the CA1 region of the rodent hippocampus express high levels of the nuclear mineralocorticoid (MR) and glucocorticoid receptors (GR). The MR affinity is such that low levels of corticosterone -as seen under rest- already substantially activate this receptor. Hence, for many years the GR was considered to be the main mediator of the stress response. This receptor causes (among other things) a delayed enhanced influx of calcium into CA1 neurons, an enhancement of sero...

Stressors engage a neural stress response network that is mediated in large part through the immediate actions of the stimuli on corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) neurons in the amygdala (CeA) and in the long-term by the actions of glucocorticoids (GC) on increased synthesis of CRF in CeA and secretion of CRF on the monoaminergic cell groups as well as forebrain. The consequences of this bias behavioral, autonomic and endocrine outputs in the stressed organism. However, the...