Salicylate generates anxiety-like behavior and type 2 theta oscillation in the ventral hippocampus of mice

Abstract

Salicylate, the main compound of many medications as Aspirin, is known to cause tinnitus if consumed in high doses or in a chronic way (for the treatment of osteoporosis, for example). Tinnitus is the hearing or perception of a sound when no physical stimulus is present. Tinnitus is not a disease itself, but a symptom present in some diseases, and is associated with anxiety and other mood disorders. Despite being directly related with auditory system, tinnitus is not generated from one specific region of the brain. Additionally, some studies showed that salicylate affects various brain regions besides the auditory system, as the striatum, amygdala and the hippocampus. Early studies have ascribed a unitary function to the hippocampus: declarative memory processing. However, more recent studies showed that the hippocampus not only has other functions, as emotional processing, but also can be divided into ventral and dorsal, and the ventral part plays an essential role in emotional processing. The most studied oscillation of the brain is the theta rhythm, and it can be found in the entire hippocampus. Two types of theta can be distinguished: the type 1, that is atropine resistant, has a higher frequency (7 to 10 Hz) and is related with motor pattern behaviors; and the type 2 theta, that is atropine sensitive, has a lower frequency (4 to 7 Hz) and occur during anesthesia, alert immobility and high arousal situations. The present study investigated the electrophysiological effects of salicylate in the ventral hippocampus of behaving mice. Through salicylate injection we generated type 2 theta in the ventral hippocampus. We also found that salicylate led to anxietylike behavior