Functional Organization of the Rodent Parabrachial Nucleus

The rodent parabrachial nucleus (PBN) is not merely a sensory relay station but also plays an important role in integrating various ascending and descending inputs together with plastic changes of neuronal responses after learning and experience. The limbic and reward systems receive ingestion-related information via the cortical areas in primates, whereas in rodents the information is sent to these systems mostly via the PBN. To explore how the rat PBN is functionally organized, we detected activation patterns of neurons mainly by means of c-fos immunohistochemistry to show neuronal activation in different situations of ingestive behavior. The expression pattern was different under nutritionally replete and deficient conditions, perceptually new and familiar conditions, and learned and unlearned conditions. As for the possible functions, the rostral part of the external lateral subnucleus is related to general visceral inputs; the caudal part of the external lateral subnucleus, aversive behavior; the dorsal lateral subnucleus, ingestive behavior; and the central medial subnucleus, taste of NaCl. Because several genes were localized in specific subnuclei, we are trying to correlate the gene expressions with possible functional significance.