We have demonstrated that corticosterone implants in the central nucleus of the amygdala do not significantly increase the freezing response of rats exposed to a stress. Moreover, exogenous subcortical administration of corticosterone did not consistently affect another measure of anxiety, namely, the baseline startle response. Moreover, Dr. Li-Xin Zhang has worked intensively on his technique of neuronal transfection with the adeno-associated virus modified to express the antisense cDNA complemen- tary to a gene or mRNA of interest, in this case the glucocorticoid receptor gene, the CRF receptor, and CRF itself. We plan to perform intracerebral injections of the plasmid constructs generated as mentionned above with the help of Dr. Zhang.
