Genetic access to nNOS+ GABAergic projection neurons and NGFCs will facilitate the study of their inputs and outputs, physiological properties, and in vivo functions. The nNOS-CreER driver also efficiently labeled nNOS neurons in olfactory bulb, striatum, amygdala, superioculicullus, and hypothalamus ( Figure S6; Table 2). Corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH; also known as corticotropin releasing factor-CRF) is best known for mediating neuroendocrine stress response (Korosi and Baram, 2008). CRH and its

receptors are widely expressed in the CNS (Korosi and Baram, 2008). CRH modulates a wide range of behaviors, including anxiety, arousal, motor function, learning, and memory (Korosi and Baram, 2008), and has been implicated in early life programming (Korosi and Baram, 2009) and depression Sirolimus molecular weight (Binder and Nemeroff, 2010).

In cerebral cortex, CRH neurons constitute a significant fraction of GABA interneurons (Kubota et al., 2011). The CRH-ires-Cre driver appears to target CRH neurons throughout the brain, including those in the paraventricular nuclei of hypothalamus, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, locus coeruleus, raphe, and amygdala ( Figure S7, Table 2). In superior culicullus, labeled neurons include bottlebrush cells, which project their dendritic terminals in monostritified arrays selleck screening library (“bottlebrush” dendritic endings) and have been implicated in motion processing ( Major et al., 2000). In hippocampus and neocortex, the subset of targeted interneurons showed no overlap with PV, SST, and only partial overlap with CR (33% ± 5%; n = 816 cells from two mice). The CRH-ires-Cre driver will facilitate studies of the function and development of CRH neurons; it will also allow study of how early life experience and chronic stress alter the connectivity and function of CRH neurons MTMR9 in distributed

neural circuits that mediate stress responses in the adult brain. The calcium binding protein calretinin (CR) is expressed in a subpopulation of GABAergic neurons throughout the brain. In cerebral cortex, CR interneurons include layer 1 GABA neurons and several subpopulations that coexpress SST and VIP (Kubota et al., 2011). Labeling mediated by CR-ires-Cre and CR-CreER driver lines largely recapitulate endogenous CR expression ( Table 2; Figure S8). The CR-CreER shows high or modest Cre activity, depending on brain regions, upon tamoxifen induction ( Figure S8). Cortistatin (CST) is a neuropeptide that shares 11 of its 14 amino acids with SST (de Lecea, 2008). CST is predominantly expressed in cerebral cortex, and in subsets of GABA interneurons with partial overlap to SST. In contrast to SST, CST administration in brain ventricles enhances EEG synchronization by selectively promoting slow-wave sleep (de Lecea, 2008). Steady-state levels of CST mRNAs oscillate during the light:dark cycle and are upregulated upon sleep deprivation.