ArticleBiology of sex differences2022
A sex difference in mouse dopaminergic projections from the midbrain to basolateral amygdala.
Article in Biology of sex differences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal Exposure to Imidacloprid Affects Cognition and Anxiety-Related Behaviors in Male and Female CD-1 Mice.Toxics · 2025Article
- Cross-species dissection of the modular role of the ventral tegmental area in depressive disorders.Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Role of Lactobacillus plantarum-Derived Extracellular Vesicles in Regulating Alcohol Consumption.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Article
- Hematological and inflammatory markers in Han Chinese patients with drug-free schizophrenia: relationship with symptom severity.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- Sex differences in the relationship between depression and Alzheimer's disease-mechanisms, genetics, and therapeutic opportunities.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2024Review
- Adolescent neurostimulation of dopamine circuit reverses genetic deficits in frontal cortex function.eLife · 2023Article
- Adolescent neurostimulation of dopamine circuit reverses genetic deficits in frontal cortex function.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Integrative Roles of Dopamine Pathway and Calcium Channels Reveal a Link between Schizophrenia and Opioid Use Disorder.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- State-dependent modulation of positive and negative affective valences by a parabrachial nucleus-to-ventral tegmental area pathway in mice.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2023Article
- The neural basis underlying female vulnerability to depressive disorders.Animal cells and systems · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDopaminergic circuits play important roles in the motivational control of behavior and dysfunction in dopaminergic circuits have been implicated in several psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and depression. While these disorders exhibit different incidence rates in men and women, the potential sex differences in the underlying neural circuits are not well-understood. Previous anatomical tracing studies in mammalian species have revealed a prominent circuit projection connecting the dopaminergic midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the basolateral amygdala (BLA), which is involved in emotional processing and associative learning. However, whether there is any sex difference in this anatomical circuit remains unknown.
methodsTo study the potential sex differences in the VTA-to-BLA dopaminergic circuit, we injected two viral vectors encoding fluorescent reporters of axons and synaptic boutons (AAV-FLEX-tdTomato and AAV-FLEX-SynaptophysinGFP, respectively) into the VTA of a mouse transgenic driver line (tyrosine hydroxylase promoter-driven Cre, or TH-Cre), which restricts the reporter expression to dopaminergic neurons. We then used confocal fluorescent microscopy to image the distribution and density of dopaminergic axons and synaptic boutons in serial sections of both male and female mouse brain.
resultsWe found that the overall labeling intensity of VTA-to-BLA dopaminergic projections is intermediate among forebrain dopaminergic pathways, significantly higher than the projections to the prefrontal cortex, but lower than the projections to the nucleus accumbens. Within the amygdala areas, dopaminergic axons are concentrated in BLA. Although the size of BLA and the density of dopaminergic axons within BLA are similar between male and female mice, the density of dopaminergic synaptic boutons in BLA is significantly higher in male brain than female brain.
conclusionsOur results demonstrate an anatomical sex difference in mouse dopaminergic innervations from the VTA to BLA. This finding may provide a structural foundation to study neural circuit mechanisms underlying sex differences in motivational and emotional behaviors and related psychiatric dysfunctions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.