Abstract
Traumatic events may lead to anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the majority of individuals exposed to trauma do not develop these disorders. The stressor controllability paradigm has been widely used as a model for understanding the neurobiology underlying factors that confer vulnerability and resilience to the outcome of traumatic events. In this paradigm rats receive a series of tail shocks: one group of rats have control over the termination of the shock by means of turning a wheel (escapable shock, ES), while the other “yoked” group of rats receive physically identical shocks but have no control over shock termination (inescapable shock, IS). In subsequent behavioral tests that model components of anxiety and depression, IS rats without control show increased signs of behavioral depression, while ES rats that have control over the shock behave as naïve home caged (HC) rats. We have previously reported that individual deep layer pyramidal neurons from the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) exhibit changes in their intrinsic excitability following ES. To examine if there is a corresponding reduction in synaptic inhibition, we tested IS, ES and HC deep layer pyramidal neurons under identical conditions. Collecting such electrophysiological data from pyramidal neurons after exposure to stress is a technical challenge, yet very useful for conductance-based neural simulations and computational modeling. Here we present a data set of spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) gathered from whole-cell patch-clamp recordings of individual prefrontal cortical deep layer neurons from adult rats (60-70 days old) after exposure to ES, IS or HC. In order to analyze the data, we provide our script used for the detection of synaptic events written for the scientific/engineering program Igor Pro that allows users to define their own event detection parameters.
Highlights
Lack of control over stressors may be a predisposing factor for anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and drug dependence
We have previously shown that after two hours post-treatment, the intrinsic excitability of the deep layer ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) pyramidal neurons is increased in rats that received escapable shock (ES) but not inescapable shock (IS) treatment compared to naïve home caged (HC) rats[9]
Quantifying inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) following controllable and uncontrollable stress in the prelimbic (PL) region of the prefrontal cortex: In order to understand the overall state of the inhibitory circuit in the PL we studied spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) frequency and amplitude from pyramidal neurons in the deep layers of the cortex (Figure 2)
Summary
Lack of control over stressors may be a predisposing factor for anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and drug dependence. Not all individuals who experience stress develop these disorders suggesting a mechanism for resilience[1] To explore this relationship at a neurobiological level, we utilized the stressor controllability paradigm[2,3]. The balance of excitation/inhibition is what determines the overall excitability, we set out to gather data on the overall state of the inhibitory circuit by recording spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) from the layer 5/6 pyramidal neurons. This in turn will allow us (and other groups) to build detailed computer simulations to better understand the cortical circuitry, and how inhibitory plastic changes occur shortly after stressful situations
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