The Neuroscience Club  is pleased to announce that Pete Vento is the recipient of the first ever Neuroscience Club Travel Award!  Pete is a PhD student in the Behavioral Neuroscience Program in the Department of Psychology.  He is part of Dr. Derek Daniels laboratory, which focuses on the neurobiology of ingestive behaviors.  The award will help defray the costs of attending an upcoming conference – Pete will be presenting a poster at the 20^th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, in Zurich, Switzerland in July.  See below for the poster abstract:

Role of the anteroventral third ventricle region in angiotensin II-induced behavioral desensitization.

P.J. Vento & D. Daniels. Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo

Angiotensin II (AngII) acts centrally to cause increases in water and salt intake. Repeated intracerebroventricular (icv) injections of AngII, however, result in a reduction in the dipsogenic response to a subsequent AngII injection. This AngII-induced behavioral desensitization requires angiotensin type I receptors, is not the result of some broader behavioral deficit, and likely reflects changes in AngII-responsiveness at the level of the receptor, but a neuroanatomical locus for this phenomenon is unknown. The anteroventral third ventricle (AV3V) region has been shown to be important in mediating the dipsogenic effects of icv AngII and, as such, is likely involved in the effects of repeated AngII administration. Consistent with previous studies, we found that injection of AngII directly into the AV3V region stimulated water intake, using doses that do not stimulate water intake when injected icv (1 ng). To investigate the role of this brain area in AngII-induced behavioral desensitization, we made repeated injections of AngII into the AV3V region, using a dose of AngII that did not produce desensitization when delivered icv. We found that when all injections were made into the AV3V region, rats given repeated injections of AngII (100 ng) drank less water after a test injection of AngII (100 ng) compared to rats given repeated injections of vehicle (TBS) before the same AngII test injection. The results provide additional support for the AV3V region in mediating the central actions of AngII and suggest a role for this region in AngII-induced desensitization.