The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in the processing of emotionally significant stimuli, particularly the inhibition of inappropriate responses. We examined the role of the mPFC in regulation of fear responses using a differential fear conditioning procedure in which the excitatory conditioned stimulus (CS+) was paired with an aversive footshock and intermixed with the inhibitory conditioned stimulus (CS-). In the first experiment, using rats as subjects, muscimol, a gamma-amino-butyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor agonist, or artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF) was infused intracranially into the mPFC across three conditioning sessions. Twenty-four hours after the last conditioning session, freezing response of the rats was tested in a drug-free state. Neither the muscimol nor the aCSF infusion had any effect on differential responding. In the second experiment, the same experimental procedure was used except that the infusion was made before the testing session rather than the conditioning sessions. The results showed that muscimol infusion impaired differential responding: the level of freezing to CS- was indiscriminable from that to CS+. Taken together, these results suggest that the mPFC is responsible for the regulation of fear response by inhibiting inappropriate fear expressions.
Animals ; Freezing ; Muscimol ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Rats

Numerous studies have implicated the hippocampus in the encoding and storage of declarative and spatial memories. Several models have considered the hippocampus and its distinct subfields to contain homogeneous pyramidal cell populations. Yet, recent studies have led to a consensus that the dorso-ventral and proximo-distal axes have different connectivities and physiologies. The remaining deep-superficial axis of the pyramidal layer, however, remains relatively unexplored due to a lack of techniques that can record from neurons simultaneously at different depths. Recent advances in transgenic mice, two-photon imaging and dense multisite recording have revealed extensive disparities between the pyramidal cells located in the deep and the superficial layers. Here, we summarize differences between the two populations in terms of gene expression and connectivity with other intra-hippocampal subregions and local interneurons that underlie distinct learning processes and spatial representations. A unified picture will emerge to describe how such local segregations can increase the capacity of the hippocampus to compute and process numerous tasks in parallel.
Animals ; Consensus ; Gene Expression ; Hippocampus ; Interneurons ; Learning ; Memory ; Mice ; Mice, Transgenic ; Neurons ; Pyramidal Cells ; Spatial Memory

We present a case of achondrogenesis type II demonstrating increased nuchal translucency on the first trimester ultrasound, which was confirmed in the second trimester ultrasound. Achondrogenesis type II is characterized by micromelia, varied ossification of spine, an enlarged calvarium with normal ossification, variable shortening of the ribs, and lack of rib fractures. In this case, ultrasonographic examination in the second trimester revealed a normally ossified cranium with relatively short long bones and a mildly protuberant abdomen due to small thorax and scanty ossified vertebral bodies. All these findings were compatible with the diagnosis of achondrogenesis type II. We further confirmed the diagnosis of achondrogenesis type II with postmortem radiographic examination.
Abdomen ; Female ; Humans ; Nuchal Translucency Measurement ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Trimester, First ; Pregnancy Trimester, Second ; Prenatal Diagnosis ; Rib Fractures ; Ribs ; Skull ; Spine ; Thorax

Since the 1980's, prenatal care for pregnant women and their babies has improved maternal and neonatal health. However, despite prenatal care, the rate of some complications, such as major fetal anomalies, preterm labor, and low birth weight have not improved. Only 10.3% of Korean women of childbearing age take folic acid supplementation and approximately 14% still consume alcohol during pregnancy. Because in Korea about 50% of pregnancies are unintended, those women have higher exposure rates to alcohol, drugs, and ionizing radiation. Because most fetal anomalies occur between 5 to 10 gestational weeks, the initial prenatal care provided at 7 to 8 gestational weeks is too late to prevent fetal anomalies. Preconception care may identify and modify adverse health, behavioral, and social outcomes for women and their unborn babies. Recently, a number of preconception interventions have been reported to have evidence-based effectiveness in improving pregnancy outcomes. These include folic acid supplementation, avoiding alcohol intake, smoking cessation, counseling on potentially teratogenic drugs, infection control, immunizations, and control of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypothyroidism, obesity. For the improvement of maternal and fetal health, guidelines for preconception care must be developed in Korea. All health care providers should understand the clinical importance of evidence-based preconception care.
Chronic Disease ; Counseling ; Female ; Folic Acid ; Health Personnel ; Humans ; Hypothyroidism ; Immunization ; Infant, Low Birth Weight ; Infant, Newborn ; Infection Control ; Korea ; Obesity ; Obstetric Labor, Premature ; Preconception Care ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Outcome ; Pregnant Women ; Prenatal Care ; Radiation, Ionizing ; Smoking Cessation ; Teratogens

Various fetal and maternal conditions are known to be associated with oligohydramnios. In general, oligohydramnios developed early in pregnancy is less common but frequently has a poor prognosis. The use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor antagonists during pregnancy has been associated with oligohydramnios as well as growth restriction, pulmonary hypoplasia with respiratory distress, acute renal failure, cranial malformation and fetal death. Although many researchers report a use of oral hypoglycemic agents such as glyburide or metformin in gestational diabetes mellitus, but potential adverse effects of glimepiride, which is relatively recently developed, is not well known owing to the lack of clinical data, especially early in pregnancy. A 41-year-old woman with chronic hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus was treated with drugs including metformin, glimepiride and angiotensin receptor antagonist until approximately 20 weeks' gestations, when severe oligohydramnios was noted. After the hospitalization for bed rest, fetal surveillance, and discontinuation of the agents, amniotic fluid reaccumulated, and the infant was delivered at term. We report this case with a brief review of literatures.
Acute Kidney Injury ; Amniotic Fluid ; Angiotensin Receptor Antagonists ; Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors ; Angiotensins ; Antihypertensive Agents ; Bed Rest ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; Diabetes, Gestational ; Female ; Fetal Death ; Glyburide ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Hypoglycemic Agents ; Infant ; Metformin ; Oligohydramnios ; Pregnancy ; Prognosis ; Sulfonylurea Compounds

OBJECTIVE: The freezing response in rats has been used widely as an index of fear in threatening or stressful situations. Considering its importance in basic studies of affective disorders and in drug testing, it is necessary to develop a reliable, automated system for measuring the freezing response accurately. METHODS: We developed the Vision-Based Analysis for Freezing (V-BAFF) system to analyze the freezing response in rats, based on several image-processing modules and motion classification schemes generated from our own experience. We compared the performance of V-BAFF with that of experienced human observers. RESULTS: The level of freezing measured with V-BAFF was highly correlated with that measured by human observers. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that V-BAFF could yield a bias-free, accurate, and efficient measurement of freezing in rats.
Animals ; Freezing ; Humans ; Mood Disorders ; Rats

Trace fear conditioning is characterized by a stimulus-free trace interval (TI) between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US), which requires an array of brain structures to support the formation and storage of associative memory. The entorhinal cortex (EC) has been proposed to provide essential neural code for resolving temporal discontinuity in conjunction with the hippocampus. However, how the CS and TI are encoded at the neuronal level in the EC is not clear. In Exp. 1, we tested the effect of bilateral pre-training electrolytic lesions of EC on trace vs. delay fear conditioning using rats as subjects. We found that the lesions impaired the acquisition of trace but not delay fear conditioning confirming that EC is a critical brain area for trace fear memory formation. In Exp. 2, single-unit activities from EC were recorded during the pretraining baseline and post-training retention sessions following trace or delay conditioning. The recording results showed that a significant proportion of the EC neurons modulated their firing during TI after the trace conditioning, but not after the delay fear conditioning. Further analysis revealed that the majority of modulated units decreased the firing rate during the TI or the CS. Taken together, these results suggest that EC critically contributes to trace fear conditioning by modulating neuronal activity during the TI to facilitate the association between the CS and US across a temporal gap.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate patients with adnexal masses that were managed surgically during pregnancy and their effect on fetal outcome. METHODS: The data were reviewed concerning pregnant women who required surgery at Samsung Cheil hospital between January 1996 to December 2001. Among 50,126 deliveries, 255 cases of ovarian tumors were evaluated for clinical aspects, histologic patterns, and obstetrics and fetal outcome. RESULTS: 1. The prevalence of ovarian mass in pregnancy was 0.5% (255 cases in 50,126 deliveries). 14 cases of malignant tumors were founded. 2. The maternal mean age was 28.7+/-3.6 years old, mean gavida was 1.8+/-1.1, and mean parity was 0.3+/-0.5. 3. The mean gestational weeks of diagnosis was 11.9+/-8.6 weeks. Prenatal operations were performed in 160 cases, and 95 cases of ovarian masses were operated at delivery time by cesarean section. 4. In the group of prenatal operation, preterm delivery and caesarian section rate were decreased at operation before 23 gestational weeks (P<0.05). 5. In 42 cases, Emergency operations were done. Mean delivery weeks was 36.7+/-7.2 weeks and was earlier than elective operation group (P<0.05). 6. The mean size of ovarian mass was 9.5+/-3.8 cm. The pathologic features of the 255 lesions were as follows: 98 benign cystic teratomas, 43 mucinous cystadenomas, 31 endometriomas, 20 serous cystadenomas, 14 simple cysts, 14 paraovarian cysts, 6 follicular cysts, 5 corpus luteal cysts, 5 theca luteal cysts, 3 hydrosalpinx, 2 fibromas, and 14 malignant tumors. 7. The 231 patients for whom the outcome of pregnancy was available, 18 (7%) gave birth before 37 weeks of gestation, while 3 (1.2%) experienced spontaneous abortions, 2 artificial abortions, and 1 hysterotomy. CONCLUSION: Most adnexal masses identified by sonography during pregnancy were small, simple cysts that did not pose a risk a pregnancy. However the percentage of malignant tumors or tumors of low malignant potential was 1.8 fold greater than previously reported. Surgical intervention at <23 weeks of gestation might have not been adverse outcomes.
Abortion, Spontaneous ; Cesarean Section ; Cystadenoma, Mucinous ; Cystadenoma, Serous ; Diagnosis ; Emergencies ; Endometriosis ; Female ; Fibroma ; Follicular Cyst ; Humans ; Hysterotomy ; Obstetrics ; Parity ; Parturition ; Pregnancy* ; Pregnant Women ; Prevalence ; Teratoma

OBJECTIVE: Severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and poorer quality of life (QOL). The aim of this study was to evaluate the severity of NVP and maternal well-being status using the Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis and Nausea (PUQE) scale in a Korean population. METHODS: A total of 527 pregnant women who were receiving prenatal care at 4 hospitals were asked to participate in the study between January 2015 and June 2015. The severity of NVP was evaluated by the PUQE scale and maternal well-being status was evaluated using the visual analogue scale (VAS). Statistical analyses were performed to determine the risk factors associated with NVP and the associations between the severity of NVP and QOL. RESULTS: Among the 472 eligible pregnant women, 381 (80.7%) were suffering from NVP during pregnancy. No significant differences (P>0.05) were observed in any of the variables between the 2 study groups, with the exception of smoking, alcohol consumption, and history of NVP. NVP history was found to be the most powerful risk factor (adjusted odds ratio, 11.6; 95% confidence interval, 4.7–28.7). The correlation coefficient (r) between the VAS scores of maternal well-being status and PUQE severity was −0.25 (r 2=0.062; P-< 0.001). CONCLUSION: In this study, an explicit decline in maternal well-being status was observed according to severity of NVP. The PUQE scale may be of help to clinicians, healthcare providers, and researchers because of its simplicity and usefulness as a tool for NVP evaluation.
Alcohol Drinking ; Female ; Health Personnel ; Humans ; Korea ; Nausea ; Odds Ratio ; Pregnancy Outcome ; Pregnancy ; Pregnant Women ; Prenatal Care ; Quality of Life ; Risk Factors ; Smoke ; Smoking ; Visual Analog Scale ; Vomiting

OBJECTIVE: To validate quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR) via chorionic villus sampling (CVS) for the diagnosis of fetal aneuploidies. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of consecutive pregnant women who had undergone CVS at Cheil General Hospital between December 2009 and June 2014. Only cases with reported QF-PCR before long-term culture (LTC) for conventional cytogenetic analysis were included, and the results of these two methods were compared. RESULTS: A total of 383 pregnant women underwent QF-PCR and LTC via CVS during the study period and 403 CVS specimens were collected. The indications of CVS were as follows: abnormal first-trimester ultrasonographic findings, including increased fetal nuchal translucency (85.1%), advanced maternal age (6.8%), previous history of fetal anomalies (4.2%), and positive dual test results for trisomy 21 (3.9%). The results of QF-PCR via CVS were as follows: 76 (18.9%) cases were identified as trisomy 21 (36 cases), 18 (33 cases), or 13 (seven cases), and 4 (1.0%) cases were suspected to be mosaicism. All results of common autosomal trisomies by QF-PCR were consistent with those of LTC and there were no false-positive findings. Four cases suspected as mosaicism in QF-PCR were confirmed as non-mosaic trisomies of trisomy 21 (one case) or trisomy 18 (three cases) in LTC. CONCLUSION: QF-PCR via CVS has the advantage of rapid prenatal screening at an earlier stage of pregnancy for common chromosomal trisomies and thus can reduce the anxiety of parents. In particular, it can be helpful for pregnant women with increased fetal nuchal translucency or abnormal first-trimester ultrasonographic findings.
Aneuploidy* ; Anxiety ; Chorion* ; Chorionic Villi Sampling* ; Chorionic Villi* ; Cytogenetic Analysis ; Diagnosis ; Down Syndrome ; Female ; Fluorescence ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Maternal Age ; Medical Records ; Mosaicism ; Nuchal Translucency Measurement ; Parents ; Polymerase Chain Reaction* ; Pregnancy ; Pregnant Women ; Prenatal Diagnosis* ; Retrospective Studies ; Trisomy