“Cholinergic involvement in stress-related behaviors in mice and humans”

Marina R. Picciotto, PhD. Charles B.G. Murphy Professor in Psychiatry, Professor of Neuroscience and Pharmacology Yale University School of Medicine The cholinergic system has been implicated in adaptive and maladaptive behavioral responses to stress. In particular, work in human subjects has shown that acetycholine (ACh) levels are elevated when unipolar and bipolar individuals are actively depressed, and work in our laboratory has shown that ACh signaling in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is important for unconditioned responses to stress. We have demonstrated that pharmacological or molecular genetic manipulations of ACh signaling through nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) in BLA is sufficient to recapitulate effects of systemic modulation of the nicotinic system on stress-induced behaviors in male and female mice. In our current studies, we have begun to identify the cell types and microcircuits in BLA involved in nAChR-mediated changes in anxiety-like behaviors.