Although Interferon-alpha (IFN-α) is a powerful drug in treating several viral infections and certain tumors, a considerable amount of neuropsychiatry side-effects such as depression and anxiety are unavoidable consequence. Combination with selective serotonin (5-HT) reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine significantly improved the situation. However, the potential 5-HT1A receptorand 5-HT1B recep...

Immobility time in the forced swimming has been described as analogous to emotional blunting or apathy and has been used for characterizing schizophrenia animal models. Several clinical studies support the use of NMDA receptor antagonists to model schizophrenia in rodents. Some works describe the effects of ketamine on immobility behavior but there is variability in the experimental design used...

Objectives Studies regarding the role of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) in depression are conflicting. Therefore, it was decided to examine the effect of different drugs that enhance the GABA system on the time of immobility induced by the forced swim test (FST). Materials and methods Adult albino mice were divided into several groups of six animals. Each group received an intraperitoneal injec...

Objective: Rosa damascena mill L (R. damascena) is an ornamental plant that has several therapeutic (such as sedative and hypnotic) effects. It also heals depression, grief, nervous stress and tension. In the present study we evaluated antidepressant-like effect of R. damascena using forced swimming test (FST). Material and Methods: Three doses of aqueous extract (15, 60 and 90 mg/kg) was inje...

Recently in our laboratory we found that DTG (sigma receptor agonist 1,3-di-o-tolyl-guanidine) sub-chronic administration reduced the hyperlocomotor activity and reversed the neuronal hypotrophy in the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and nucleus accumbens, generated in rats with neonatal ventral hippocampus lesion (nVHL). We also observed that DTG reversed some of the behavioral and neuromorphologi...

Withania somnifera (WS) possess anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. WS preparations have a potential therapeutic role in the central nervous system (CNS) related disorders in animal models. In this study, the possible protective effect of acute aqueous WS root extract on behavioral despair was explored and compared with fluoxetine, an antidepressant with selective serotonin (5-HT) reu...

The forced swim test (FST) is commonly employed to test the potency of drugs to reduce immobility as an indicator of anti-despair. Certainly, antidepressant drugs reduce the total time of immobility and enlarge the latency to the first immobility period. FST is preceded by the open field test (OFT) to discard any influence of changes in general motor activity that could interfere with immobilit...

Young rats become immobile when exposed to a potentially infanticidal adult male rat. Male-induced immobility declines during the preweaning period, paralleling the decrease in infanticidal threat. To investigate the neural substrates underlying the developmental change in immobility, male-induced expression of the immediate-early gene c-fos was assessed on postnatal days 7, 14 and 21. A huddle...