Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 369, Issue 1654, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0607
Keywords
ventral tegmental area; thalamus; baclofen; reward; absence seizures
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Funding
- Wellcome Trust [091882]
- MRC [G0900671]
- EU [FP7 HEALTH-F2-2007-202167]
- MRC [G0900671] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [G0900671] Funding Source: researchfish
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The gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) metabolite gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) shows a variety of behavioural effects when administered to animals and humans, including reward/addiction properties and absence seizures. At the cellular level, these actions of GHB are mediated by activation of neuronal GABA(B) receptors (GABA(B)Rs) where it acts as a weak agonist. Because astrocytes respond to endogenous and exogenously applied GABA by activation of both GABA(A) and GABA(B)Rs, here we investigated the action of GHB on astrocytes on the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the ventrobasal (VB) thalamic nucleus, two brain areas involved in the reward and proepileptic action of GHB, respectively, and compared it with that of the potent GABA(B)R agonist baclofen. We found that GHB and baclofen elicited dose-dependent (ED50: 1.6 mM and 1.3 mu M, respectively) transient increases in intracellular Ca2+ in VTA and VB astrocytes of young mice and rats, which were accounted for by activation of their GABA(B)Rs and mediated by Ca2+ release from intracellular store release. In contrast, prolonged GHB and baclofen exposure caused a reduction in spontaneous astrocyte activity and glutamate release from VTA astrocytes. These findings have key (patho) physiological implications for our understanding of the addictive and proepileptic actions of GHB.
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