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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on August 9, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn134
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Quantitative Analysis of the Expression of Dopamine D1 and D2 Receptors in Pyramidal and GABAergic Neurons of the Rat Prefrontal Cortex

Noemí Santana1,2, Guadalupe Mengod1,3 and Francesc Artigas1,2

1 Department of Neurochemistry and Neuropharmacology, Institut d’ Investigacions Biomèdiques de Barcelona (CSIC), IDIBAPS, 2 Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), 3 Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), 08036 Barcelona, Spain

Address correspondence to Francesc Artigas, PhD, Department of Neurochemistry and Neuropharmacology, Institut d’ Investigacions Biomèdiques de Barcelona (CSIC), IDIBAPS, Rosselló, 161, 6th floor, 08036 Barcelona, Spain. Email: fapnqi{at}iibb.csic.es.

Mesocortical dopamine (DA) is a key neurotransmitter in cognitive processes and is involved in schizophrenia and antipsychotic drug action. DA exerts a highly complex modulation of network activity in prefrontal cortex (PFC), possibly due to the recruitment of multiple signaling pathways and to specialized cellular localizations of DA receptors in cortical microcircuits. Using double in situ hybridization, we quantitatively assessed the expression of D1 and D2 receptor messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in pyramidal and {gamma}-aminobutyric acidergic (GABAergic) neurons of rat PFC. The proportion of pyramidal and GABA cells expressing these transcripts shows great regional variability in PFC, with little overlap (layer V). More pyramidal and GABA cells express D1 than D2 receptors. D1 receptors are expressed by a greater proportion of GABA than pyramidal neurons, yet the number of D1-positive pyramidal cells outnumbers D1-positive interneurons due to the greater abundance of pyramidal neurons. Occasional PFC cells show high levels of mRNA, similar to those in striatal neurons. Finally, pyramidal and GABAergic cells expressing the same transcript were almost never found in close apposition, yet D2-containing pyramidal neurons were often found close to non-D2 GABA neurons. Thus, cellular and network DA actions in PFC are region and layer specific and may depend on precise cellular interactions.

Key Words: antipsychotics • dopamine D1 receptors • dopamine D2 receptors • GABA interneurons • prefrontal cortex • pyramidal neurons


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