Behavioural brain research
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Rats are one of the most commonly used species for spinal cord injury research. Since the advent of the Basso, Beattie, Bresnahan (BBB) locomotor rating scale, the majority of spinal cord injury research relies upon evaluating locomotor behaviour in thoracic spinal cord injury rat models. Slightly more than 50% of all traumatic spinal cord injuries in humans, however, occur at the level of the cervical spinal cord. ⋯ Consequently, there is a need to develop and use experimental cervical spinal cord injury models and understand the behavioural characteristics of such models. The present review highlights the sensorimotor abilities of cervical spinal cord-injured rats, including both forelimb, hind limb, and whole body behaviours. We also provide insight into the neuroanatomic substrates important for performing a given behaviour, information which may prove essential in the development of site-directed therapeutic strategies.
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Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5HT) plays important roles in both embryonic development as a mediator of neurogenesis and in the mature brain as a neurotransmitter. Disturbances in serotonergic transmission have been indicated in several psychiatric disorders. In the search for the biological substrates of psychiatric diseases, studies using animal models represent complementary approaches to studies on human subjects. ⋯ In the social interaction test, high-5HT animals spent less time in active contact with conspecifics and displayed a narrower spectrum of social behaviors than their low-5HT counterparts, while in the zero-maze and hole-board tasks, they showed a lower level of exploratory activity (head dips and nose pokes) in comparison to low-5HT rats. On the other hand, thigmotactic behavior (the percentage of time spent in open quadrants of zero-maze and the percentage of central holes visited in hole-board) did not differ between the sublines. The results suggest that as a result of selection process, a specific component of anxiety-related behavior (i.e. exploratory activity directed towards a novel environment and conspecifics) has been affected in Wistar-Zagreb 5HT rats.