Cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript in catecholamine and noncatecholamine presympathetic vasomotor neurons of rat rostral ventrolateral medulla

Abstract

Presympathetic vasomotor adrenergic (C1) and nonadrenergic (non-C1) neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM) provide the main excitatory drive to cardiovascular sympathetic preganglionic neurons in the spinal cord. C1 and non-C1 neurons contain cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART), suggesting that CART may be a common marker for RVLM presympathetic neurons. To test this hypothesis, we first used double-immunofluorescence staining for CART and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) to quantify CART-immunoreactive (-IR) catecholamine and noncatecholamine neurons in the C1 region. Next, we quantified the proportion of CART-IR RVLM neurons that expressed Fos in response to a hypote..