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138 Gender‐related differences in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in rats
Author(s) -
Stefanova N.,
BozhilovaPastirova A.,
Ovtscharoff W.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
international journal of developmental neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.761
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1873-474X
pISSN - 0736-5748
DOI - 10.1016/0736-5748(96)80328-5
Subject(s) - stria terminalis , citation , library science , nucleus , psychology , political science , computer science , neuroscience
The distribution of GABA-immunoreactive neurons in the subnuclei of the rat bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) was studied by means of GABA immunohistochemistty. Twenty days old Sprague-Dawley rats were anaesthetized with sodium pentobarbital(40 mgikg, i.p.) and perfused transcardially with a fixative containing 4% parafomtaldehyde in 0.1 M phosphate buffer at pH 7.2. Brains were removed, posttixed in the same fixative (4’C, I h) then washed several times in PBS and stored overnight at 4°C. On the next day they were frozen and cut coronary at 40 urn thick sections on a microtome (Retchert-Yung, Cambridge Instruments). Sections through the BST were processed etther for Nissl staining, or for GABA immunohistochemistry. We used polyclonal anti-GABA antibodies (Incstar), (I :4000) and silver intensification with silver enhancer kit (Sigma). Parallelly, Nissl staining of the same brain area was done to determine the ratio of GABA-immunoreactive neurons to the total neuronal number in the BST, and to look for a certain sex difference in it. The same procedures were applied to hortnonally manipulated males in the “critical period” of sexual differentiation of the brain. Computer assisted quantitative analysis (Olympus-CUE 2 micro analysis system) of GABA-immunoreactive neurons showed statistically significant sex differences in the BST applymg Student’s t-test. Data were presented as means = S. E. M.