Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa

By Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa, Abraham Puga-Olguín, León Jesús Germán-Ponciano, Rosa-Isela García-Ríos and Cesar Soria-Fregozo

Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common psychiatric disorders, affecting a high percentage of human beings around the world. This emotional disorder possesses marked gender differences and occurs more often in women than in men, in a proportion of 2:1. Accompanying the reproductive cycle of women are significant fluctuations in plasma and brain steroid hormone concentrations, including oestradiol, progesterone, and allopregnanolone, among others. These hormonal changes are related to some illnesses and with the development of anxiety and mood swings occurring in the premenstrual and postpartum period, and particularly during the menopause. Menopause is a clinical term used to indicate the cessation of the woman's reproductive ability that occurs naturally, but also may be surgically induced by bilateral oophorectomy, with or without the removal of the Fallopian tubes and uterus. Natural menopause includes specific periods related to the physiological and hormonal changes produced by ovarian failure, it is usually a natural stage that occurs to women in midlife, during their late 40s or early 50s, indicating the end of the reproductive period in the woman. During the menopause transition years, women experience changes in the production of ovarian hormones, which are associated with significant changes in the physiological, emotional, and affective processes. Unfortunately, surgical menopause occurs at an early age, and produces similar physiological and psychiatric disorders, but they are more severe in this instance. In both cases, typical symptoms associated with menopause critically deteriorate the mental health of the women. In this way, the therapeutic management of clinical symptoms of menopause include replacement hormone therapy, the use of anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs, and other natural alternatives based on the use of chemical compounds obtained from plants such as soya. However, a general effective treatment for menopause symptoms does not yet exist. For this reason, experimental studies have proposed ovariectomy in rats as a potential tool to study the effects of a long-term absence of ovarian hormones associated with surgical menopause, which also allowed the study of substances with potential therapeutic application to ameliorate typical symptoms associated with surgical menopause. The aim of this chapter is to review the participation of ovarian hormones in the regulation of emotional and affective disorders in women with natural or surgical menopause; particularly their anatomical pathways, neurotransmission systems, and the resulting behavioural patterns. Finally, preclinical and clinical research suggested that long-term absence of ovarian hormones associated with natural or surgical menopause is the principal cause of physiological and psychiatric disorder in the women; therefore, oestrogenic compounds seem to play an important role in the maintenance of the brain structures that regulate anxiety, mood, memory, and cognitive functions in menopausal women.

Part of the book: A Fresh Look at Anxiety Disorders

By Blandina Bernal-Morales, Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa and Frank Pulido-Criollo

Emotional processes are important to survive. The Darwinian adaptive concept of stress refers to natural selection since evolved individuals have acquired effective strategies to adapt to the environment and to unavoidable changes. If demands are abrupt and intense, there might be insufficient time to successful responses. Usually, stress produces a cognitive or perceptual evaluation (emotional memory) which motivates to make a plan, to take a decision and to perform an action to face successfully the demand. Between several kinds of stresses, there are psychosocial and emotional stresses with cultural, social and political influences. The cultural changes have modified the way in which individuals socially interact. Deficits in familiar relationships and social isolation alter physical and mental health in young students, producing reduction of their capacities of facing stressors in school. Adolescence is characterized by significant physiological, anatomical, and psychological changes in boys and girls, who become vulnerable to psychiatric disorders. In particular for young adult students, anxiety and depression symptoms could interfere in their academic performance. In this chapter, we reviewed approaches to the study of anxiety and depression symptoms related with the academic performance in adolescent and graduate students. Results from available published studies in academic journals are reviewed to discuss the importance to detect information about academic performance, which leads to discover in many cases the very commonly subdiagnosed psychiatric disorders in adolescents, that is, anxiety and depression. With the reviewed evidence of how anxiety and depression in young adult students may alter their main activity in life (studying and academic performance), we discussed data in order to show a way in which professionals involved in schools could support students and stablish a routine of intervention in any case.

Part of the book: A Fresh Look at Anxiety Disorders

By Cesar Soria-Fregozo, Maria Isabel Perez-Vega, Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa, León Jesús Germán-Ponciano, Rosa Isela García- Ríos and Armando Mora-Perez

Serotonin or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is synthesized in both the brain and peripheral system, which exert their actions at a wide family of receptors classified as 5-HT1 to 5-HT7. Pharmacological, behavioral, and clinical studies involve particularly to the 5-HT1A receptors (5-HT1A-R) - auto-receptors (presynaptic) and heteroreceptors (postsynaptic) - in the control of motivated behavior, and consequently in the physiopathology of affective disorders and in the action mechanism of antidepressant drugs. In this way, some research support that 5-HT1A-R participates in the delayed effect of different types of antidepressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and tricyclic drugs, principally. The therapeutic effect of serotonergic drugs as the SSRIs, starting with the binding to auto-receptors, which produces increases of 5-HT in the synaptic cleft as consequence of blockade of serotonin reuptake. While these molecular events occur initially, in the long-term are produced plastic changes at neuronal level, as well as down-regulation of the 5-HT1A-R, which is associated with the therapeutic effects of antidepressant drugs. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and discuss the current information about of 5-HT1A-R-mediated signaling cascades, the intracellular signaling of 5-HT1A-R, in addition to their expression and pharmacology that are important to treatment of affective disorders symptoms.

Part of the book: Serotonin

By Juan Francisco Rodríguez‐Landa and Jonathan Cueto‐Escobedo

Part of the book: Menopause

By Blandina Bernal-Morales, Cecilia Luz Balderas-Vazquez and Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa

Part of the book: Health and Academic Achievement

By Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa and Jonathan Cueto-Escobedo

Part of the book: Behavioral Pharmacology

By Jonathan Cueto-Escobedo, Fabio García-García, Caio Maximino and Juan Francisco Rodríguez-Landa

Behavioral pharmacology research has been a cornerstone in the understanding of the processes that underlie the behavior of living organisms as well as the biological basis of the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive disorders that affect humans. The findings in this area have helped to explore the potential therapeutic effects of several substances for the treatment of the mentioned disorders. The present chapter brings an extremely brief introduction to this vast area. First, we try to put in context behavioral pharmacology and its relevance and then show some brief examples of how this discipline has developed over the years. Second, we review the concept of a “research model” in preclinical behavioral pharmacology, given the importance of animal models and tests in this area, followed by a brief review of the recent advances using zebra fish as a valuable tool of research. Third, more specific examples are aborded, such as the findings on sleep disorders and those related to sexual hormones and menopause.

Part of the book: Behavioral Pharmacology