NMDA receptor functional alterations in rat's hippocampus and cerebral cortex during long-term social isolation

Long-lasting social isolation, as an important psycho-emotional stress factor, can cause chronic stress in animal models, as well as in humans. The impact originates imbalance of complicated molecular mechanisms and as a result many pathological alterations are formed. Chronic stress, especially effects nervous system, in particular brain. It is evident from the literature that stress can contribute to the substitution of intracellular processes and enzyme activity in nerve cells. According to the above mentioned, main purpose of our research was to define metabolic changes in rat’s brain-cortex and hippocampus, during chronic social isolation. More specifically, our central target was to evaluate expression of ionotrophic glutamate NMDA receptor and its subunits, during normal and stressful conditions. The activity change of this particular receptor is very noteworthy as it plays an important role is the regulation of intracellular concentration of N+ and K+ ions, synaptic plasticity and memory. In our experiments, we determined NMDA receptor expression rate, in the rats’ cerebral cortex and hippocampus, after 30 day social isolation. As a result of the research, was seen that in isolated rats, hippocampal NMDA receptor’s NR1 and NR2 subunit expression was increased. Otherwise, the similar effect was not seen in the case of cerebral cortex. From the given results, it can be said that cells of the hippocampus, in comparison to the cells of the cortex, show high sensitivity to the chronic stress caused by social isolation.