Cocaine paired environment increases SATB2 levels in the rat paraventricular thalamus
Front. Behav. Neurosci.. 2018-10-02; 12:
DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00224
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Salti A(1)(2), Apostolova G(3), Kummer KK(4), Lemos C(1), Dechant G(3), El Rawas R(1).
Author information:
(1)Experimental Psychiatry Unit, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
(2)Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
(3)Institute for Neuroscience, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
(4)Division of Physiology, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
SATB2 is a DNA binding protein that specifically binds the nuclear matrix
attachment region and functions as a regulator of the transcription of large
chromatin domains. Unlike its well addressed role during brain development, the
role of SATB2 in adult brain is under-investigated. It has been shown that
deletion of SATB2 from the forebrain of adult mice significantly impaired
long-term memory for contextual fear and object recognition memory. The aim of
the present study was to investigate the effects of appetitive stimuli such as
cocaine and social interaction (SI) on SATB2 expression in the adult rat brain.
For that, we performed conditioned place preference (CPP) to cocaine (15 mg/kg)
and to SI, then assessed SATB2 expression in the brain 1 h (24 h after the last
conditioning) and 24 h (48 h after the last conditioning) after the CPP test. We
found that SATB2 expression in the paraventricular thalamus of rats was increased
1 h after the cocaine CPP test. This increase was selective for the
cocaine-paired environment since the SI-paired environment did not increase SATB2
expression in the paraventricular thalamus. Also, the cocaine paired
environment-induced increase of SATB2 levels in the paraventricular thalamus was
due to cocaine conditioning as the unpaired cocaine group did not show an
increase of SATB2 in the paraventricular thalamus. These results suggest that
SATB2 in the paraventricular thalamus appears to be involved in the association
between cocaine effects and environmental context. Further studies are needed to
address the functional role of SATB2 in cocaine conditioning.