Stress, learning and hippocampal plasticity

The first aspect (chapter 2) of this thesis deals with the alterations in cellular immunoreactivity (ir) for protein kinase Cy, the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors and the neurotrophin receptor trkB in response to spatial learning. The study shows markedly enhanced subregion-selective changes and redistribution of PKC-ir, mAChR-ir and trkB-ir in the hippocampal pyramidal neurons induced by spatial orientation in a hole board. The major changes in PKCy-ir, mAChR-ir and trkB-ir are found in the pyramidal cell bodies and the apical dendrites of the CA1 region of the hippocampus. In general, these results clearly showed that the increase in hippocampal immunoreactivity for PKCy, mAChR and trkB was spatial learning-specific. Zie: Chapter 7