The role of chat in arcuate nucleus on anxiety behaviour

Anxiety and stress are extremely crucial for the consistency of survival under the conditions of wild nature. For human beings, the level of stress becomes deeper and could be observed in every aspect of our daily lives. Impairments of the mechanism which controls this system lead to anxiety disorder and depression that affect the lives of more than 300 million people worldwide. The stress suppressive effect of nicotine by causing an addiction commonly in everyday life became a focus of interest for researchers. The pathways that nicotine stimulates are physiologically stimulated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The mechanism of anxiety, insomnia, muscle tension, careful reduction, and forgetfulness, which are came along with anxiety disorder and depression, are associated with acetylcholine. The development of effective treatment for these conditions is possible with a correct understanding of the connected systems. Chemogenetic activation technique allows us to target cholinergic neurons of ChAT-IRES-Cre transgenic mice. The aim of this study is chemogenetic activation of cholinergic neurons in the arcuate nucleus in order to understand the role of it in the anxiety behavior. Elevated plus test, open field test, and light-dark box tests were performed. The determined stress factor for those test are; the height, the open and unprotected area, and the over-lightened area. Spent time at the areas related with stress factors was associated with anxiolytic effects and it was shown that the cholinergic neuron group in the arcuate nucleus has an effect of tolerance enhancement of the stress; however, does not show any effect on locomotor activity.