, 2014). In conjunction with findings in animal models, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that stress-associated changes in connectivity in large-scale brain networks are PLX4032 an important feature of depression and other stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders, and that resilience and vulnerability may be determined

in part by individual differences in the capacity for plasticity within these circuits. Understanding the mechanisms by which stress alters connectivity in vulnerable circuits may reveal new avenues for treatment. Undoubtedly, many factors are involved, and some of them have been reviewed elsewhere (De Kloet et al., 1998a, McEwen, 2000, De Kloet et al., 2005b, Arnsten,

2009, Joëls and Baram, 2009 and Chen et al., 2010). Here we focus on a factor that has received relatively little attention, namely, endogenous glucocorticoid oscillations and their role in regulating synaptic plasticity. Glucocorticoids are hormones that are released from the adrenal gland in response to signals originating in the pituitary and hypothalamus, which receives projections from distinct circuits for detecting physiological and psychosocial stressors (Herman and Cullinan, 1997 and Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009) (Fig. 2a). In the short term, glucocorticoids serve to mobilize energy resources and facilitate sympathetic nervous system responses to maintain homeostasis and adapt click here to stress. In the long term, however, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoids in chronic stress states can have maladaptive effects, mediated in part by disruptions in negative feedback mechanisms (McEwen, 1998 and McEwen, 2003). Glucocorticoid activity also oscillates with diurnal activity rhythms, independent of external stressors (Fig. 2b): glucocorticoid secretion tends to peak in the early morning in diurnal animals (early Thymidine kinase evening in nocturnal animals), remains relatively elevated for most of the active period of the animal’s

day, and becomes relatively suppressed for most of the night. In addition, recent reports (Stavreva et al., 2009a and Lightman and Conway-Campbell, 2010) have shown that an ultradian oscillation with a period of 1–2 h is superimposed on this circadian rhythm and has equally important consequences for glucocorticoid signaling (reviewed below). In previous fixed tissue studies, stress and glucocorticoid effects on dendritic arborization and spine density took weeks to develop (Magariños et al., 1996, Wellman, 2001, Vyas et al., 2002, Radley et al., 2004 and Radley et al., 2006), which would imply that glucocorticoid oscillations occurring on a timescale of minutes to hours were unlikely to play a direct role in these changes. However, recent studies indicate that glucocorticoids and related signaling molecules can have much more rapid effects on dendritic spines than were previously suspected.