Behavioural brain research
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Depressive disorders represent a major public health problem worldwide. The limitations of current antidepressant drugs have warranted on-going research to identify pharmacological agents and strategies that offer a greater therapeutic efficacy. The NMDA/L-arginine nitric oxide (NO)-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) cascade is an important signaling pathway that is also implicated in the regulation of depression. ⋯ The effect of antidepressants on brain NO metabolism paralleled their behavioral action in case of IMI and VENL which decreased the nitrite+nitrate concentration in the brain. BUPR and FLX did not have any effect on brain nitrite+nitrate concentration. These results support the idea that some antidepressants are able to inhibit nitric oxide synthesis in the brain, an effect which could be mechanistically related to the ability of L-arginine to counteract their antidepressant-like effects.
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Mechanical pain sensitivity is characteristic of many orofacial pain conditions; however, few models exist to quantify this pain. Here we evaluated a novel adaptation of our existing operant system to characterize orofacial pain following mechanical and thermal stimuli. We demonstrate that the operant system is able to detect painful and analgesic responses to mechanical stimuli. These findings allow comparison of both mechanical and thermal stimuli using the same outcome measures.