Ema
Senior Member
- Messages
- 4,729
- Location
- Midwest USA
And go figure, thanks to @Valentijn, I now know that I have a very rare mutation of these receptors! I wish there was more research on them...
continued at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...0/fighting-stress-with-adenosine-antagonists/
When I am stressed (and I’m stressed a lot of the time, as I bet a lot of you are as well), I turn to coffee. Not just to keep me going through the time when I need to get things done, but also for relaxation. For me, the smell and taste of coffee brings me thoughts of relaxing conversations with friends and other fun times.
But what if the memories weren’t all the relaxing the caffeine was doing for me? What if the chronic caffeine consumption was keeping my stressful life at bay?
It’s time to look at adenosine 2A receptors in the hippocampus. Don’t worry, the coffee will be back.
(Source)
Batalha, et al. “Adenosine A2A receptor blockade reverts hippocampal
stress-induced deficits and restores corticosterone circadian oscillation” Molecular Psychiatry, 2012.
First let’s talk about stress. Specifically, childhood stress. In small doses, stress exposure can actually be good for you, but in large, or prolonged, doses, it’s definitely not. There are effects immediately after stress, as well as long term ones. when you suffer strong stressors in development, you can end up with changes all the way into adulthood, from cognitive deficits to predisposition to psychiatric disorders.
Why is stress in development so important? During development, our brains are developing too, particularly our hippocampus. While the hippocampus is best known for its role in memory and spatial navigation, it’s also extremely important in emotional responses. Neuronal growth in the hippocampus can come from enriched environments or chronic antidepressants, and death of those neurons can come from chronic stress. Chronic stress also disrupts the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis(the HPA axis) And that’s just in adults! During development, animals are very susceptible to stress, and the hippocampus is still developing its connections. And we’re still figuring out what changes occur during early life stress and how they relate to behaviors in adulthood.
In this case, the authors of this study were looking at adenosine 2A receptors. Adenosine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger between neurons, that plays a role in promoting sleep as one of its functions. But the role of adenosine really relies on what receptors it hits, and where those receptors are. In the hippocampus, for example, adenosine 2A receptors can increase transmission of glutamate, another neurotransmitter, and can contribute to disorders and dysfunction. For example, high adenosine 2A receptors can be seen in response to acute stress, or in Alzheimer’s. If adenosine 2A receptors in the hippocampus are altered in acute stress, and the hippocampus is altered by chronic stress in early life, does this mean that adenosine 2A receptors could have anything to do with chronic stress?
continued at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...0/fighting-stress-with-adenosine-antagonists/