Osmotic modulation of stimulus-evoked responses in the rat supraoptic nucleus

Systematic review: pain, cognition, and cardioprotection-unpacking oxytocin's contributions in a sport context

Introduction

This systematic review investigates the interplay between oxytocin and exercise; in terms of analgesic, anti-inflammatory, pro-regenerative, and cardioprotective effects. Furthermore, by analyzing measurement methods, we aim to improve measurement validity and reliability.

Methods

Utilizing PRISMA, GRADE, and MECIR protocols, we examined five databases with a modified SPIDER search. Including studies on healthy participants, published within the last 20 years, based on keywords "oxytocin," "exercise" and "measurement," 690 studies were retrieved initially (455 unique records). After excluding studies of clinically identifiable diseases, and unpublished and reproduction-focused studies, 175 studies qualified for the narrative cross-thematic and structural analysis.

Results

The analysis resulted in five categories showing the reciprocal impact of oxytocin and exercise: Exercise (50), Physiology (63), Environment (27), Social Context (65), and Stress (49). Exercise-induced oxytocin could promote tissue regeneration, with 32 studies showing its analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, while 14 studies discussed memory and cognition. Furthermore, empathy-associated OXTR rs53576 polymorphism might influence team sports performance. Since dietary habits and substance abuse can impact oxytocin secretion too, combining self-report tests and repeated salivary measurements may help achieve precision.

Discussion

Oxytocin's effect on fear extinction and social cognition might generate strategies for mental training, and technical, and tactical development in sports. Exercise-induced oxytocin can affect the amount of stress experienced by athletes, and their response to it. However, oxytocin levels could depend on the type of sport in means of contact level, exercise intensity, and duration. The influence of oxytocin on athletes' performance and recovery could have been exploited due to its short half-life. Examining oxytocin's complex interactions with exercise paves the way for future research and application in sports science, psychology, and medical disciplines.

Systematic Review Registration

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=512184, identifier CRD42024512184.

Reading between the spikes of the hypothalamic neural code

Reading the spike coding of hypothalamic neurones presents a considerable challenge because they exhibit highly irregular firing patterns. Electrophysiologists working in the motor and sensory systems, in which neurones fire more regularly, have devised satisfactory methods to describe the firing of cells, although the statistical assumptions that underlie the methods do not apply to hypothalamic neurones. Measurement of neural activity is nevertheless vital to characterise the activity of neuroendocrine cells. It has thus become necessary to develop methods suitable for the analysis of the highly irregular spike discharge patterns of both spontaneous and stimulus-evoked firing of hypothalamic neurones. We review techniques used to meet this challenge and demonstrate their considerable capacity to address important physiological questions. We also introduce a novel approach for valid statistical estimation of the information conveyed by the response of a single neurone to a periodic stimulus. The approach demonstrated significant diurnal rhythms of synaptic connectivity between hypothalamic nuclei.

Secretory cells of the supraoptic nucleus have central as well as neurohypophysial projections

Conventional neuroanatomical methods may fail to demonstrate the presence of axons that are finer than 1 microm in diameter because such processes are near or below the limit of resolution of the light microscope. The presence of such axons can, however, be readily demonstrated by recording. The most easily interpreted type of recording for this purpose is the demonstration of antidromic activation of the cell body following stimulation of the region through which the axon passes. We have exploited this technique in the hypothalamus and have demonstrated the presence of double axonal projections or axons branching very near the cell bodies of the secretory cells of the neurohypophysial system in the rat supraoptic nucleus. We found that a small proportion of supraoptic magnocellular cells could be antidromically activated both from the neural stalk and from elsewhere in the hypothalamus, including the suprachiasmatic nucleus (8 cells of a total of 182) and the antero-ventral third ventricular region (AV3V; 4 of 182 cells) near the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis (OVLT). Collision of antidromic and orthodromic spikes showed that the cells were clearly antidromically (rather than synaptically, or orthodromically) activated from both sites. A stimulus applied to one of the axons prevented propagation of a spike evoked by a pulse delivered to the other axon until sufficient time had elapsed after the first stimulus for the resultant spike to have propagated from the first stimulus site along one cell process (towards the cell body or branch point), and from this point along the other axonal branch to the second stimulus site (there was also a short additional delay period during which the axon at the site of the second stimulus recovered from its absolute refractory period). If the interval between the stimuli was progressively reduced, there came a point where the second spike failed. Such a clear demonstration of dual projections in a system where the cells were previously thought to have only a single axon raises the possibility that many nerve cells in the CNS have previously unsuspected projections.

Daily rhythms of spike coding in the rat supraoptic nucleus

Novel measures of coding based on interspike intervals were used to characterise the rhythms of single unit activity in the supraoptic nucleus during the day/night cycle in urethane-anaesthetised rats in vivo. Both continuously firing and phasic cells showed significant (P < 0.001) diurnal rhythms of spike frequency and in the irregularity of firing, as quantified by the log interval entropy (ENT). Comparison of rhythms in log interval ENT showed that the amplitude of the rhythms was greater for the continuously firing cells than for the phasic cells (P = 0.002). Rhythms persisted after hypertonic stimulation or pinealectomy and both treatments reduced the amplitude significantly only for the continuously firing cell group. By contrast, the mesor (i.e. mid-point of the rhythm) was reduced only for the phasic cell group. A similar analysis applied to the activity of cells of the suprachiasmatic nucleus showed that, after pinealectomy, there was a significant rhythm in ENT (P < 0.001) but not firing rate; however, the amplitude of the rhythm in ENT was attenuated (P = 0.047). Diurnal changes in the electrical activity of supraoptic cells are consistent with previously reported circadian changes in magnocellular neuropeptide release. Differences between continuous and phasic cell groups in the effects of osmotic stimulation on rhythmic activity indicate that the two cell types differ in their coding of osmolality and zeitgeber time information. The different effects of pinealectomy on the supraoptic and suprachiasmatic nuclei suggest that removal of endogenous melatonin unmasks a difference in circadian coding between the two nuclei.