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Noradrenergic signaling in the wakeful state inhibits microglial surveillance and synaptic plasticity in the mouse visual cortex.

ABSTRACT: Microglia are the brain's resident innate immune cells and also have a role in synaptic plasticity. Microglial processes continuously survey the brain parenchyma, interact with synaptic elements and maintain tissue homeostasis. However, the mechanisms that control surveillance and its role in synaptic plasticity are poorly understood. Microglial dynamics in vivo have been primarily studied in anesthetized animals. Here we report that microglial surveillance and injury response are reduced in awake mice as compared to anesthetized mice, suggesting that arousal state modulates microglial function. Pharmacologic stimulation of ?2-adrenergic receptors recapitulated these observations and disrupted experience-dependent plasticity, and these effects required the presence of ?2-adrenergic receptors in microglia. These results indicate that microglial roles in surveillance and synaptic plasticity in the mouse brain are modulated by noradrenergic tone fluctuations between arousal states and emphasize the need to understand the effect of disruptions of adrenergic signaling in neurodevelopment and neuropathology.

SUBMITTER: Stowell RD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6875777 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Noradrenergic signaling in the wakeful state inhibits microglial surveillance and synaptic plasticity in the mouse visual cortex.

Stowell Rianne D RD Sipe Grayson O GO Dawes Ryan P RP Batchelor Hanna N HN Lordy Katheryn A KA Whitelaw Brendan S BS Stoessel Mark B MB Bidlack Jean M JM Brown Edward E Sur Mriganka M Majewska Ania K AK

Nature neuroscience 20191021 11

Microglia are the brain's resident innate immune cells and also have a role in synaptic plasticity. Microglial processes continuously survey the brain parenchyma, interact with synaptic elements and maintain tissue homeostasis. However, the mechanisms that control surveillance and its role in synaptic plasticity are poorly understood. Microglial dynamics in vivo have been primarily studied in anesthetized animals. Here we report that microglial surveillance and injury response are reduced in awa ...[more]

PMID: 31636451

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Project description:Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), caused by gestational ethanol (EtOH) exposure, is one of the most common causes of non-heritable and life-long mental disability worldwide, with no standard treatment or therapy available. While EtOH exposure can alter the function of both neurons and glia, it is still unclear how EtOH influences brain development to cause deficits in sensory and cognitive processing later in life. Microglia play an important role in shaping synaptic function and plasticity during neural circuit development and have been shown to mount an acute immunological response to EtOH exposure in certain brain regions. Therefore, we hypothesized that microglial roles in the healthy brain could be permanently altered by early EtOH exposure leading to deficits in experience-dependent plasticity. We used a mouse model of human third trimester high binge EtOH exposure, administering EtOH twice daily by subcutaneous injections from postnatal day 4 through postnatal day 9 (P4-:P9). Using a monocular deprivation model to assess ocular dominance plasticity, we found an EtOH-induced deficit in this type of visually driven experience-dependent plasticity. However, using a combination of immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, and in vivo two-photon microscopy to assay microglial morphology and dynamics, as well as fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) and RNA-seq to examine the microglial transcriptome, we found no evidence of microglial dysfunction in early adolescence. We also found no evidence of microglial activation in visual cortex acutely after early ethanol exposure, possibly because we also did not observe EtOH-induced neuronal cell death in this brain region. We conclude that early EtOH exposure caused a deficit in experience-dependent synaptic plasticity in the visual cortex that was independent of changes in microglial phenotype or function. This demonstrates that neural plasticity can remain impaired by developmental ethanol exposure even in a brain region where microglia do not acutely assume nor maintain an activated phenotype.

Dataset Information

Noradrenergic signaling in the wakeful state inhibits microglial surveillance and synaptic plasticity in the mouse visual cortex.

Publications

Noradrenergic signaling in the wakeful state inhibits microglial surveillance and synaptic plasticity in the mouse visual cortex.

Similar Datasets

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