Contrary, diazepam treated animals under Control protocol expressed anxiety and evidenced an increased hippocampal-plasticity, without alterations in NOS-1 expression.
Thereby, one candidate pathway is neuronal nitric oxide (NO) signaling, and accordingly, rodent studies have identified NO synthase (NOS-I), encoded by NOS1, as a strong molecular candidate for modulating anxiety and hippocampus-dependent learning processes.
Taken together, NOS1 knockdown mice display a characteristic behavioural profile consisting of reduced anxiety and impaired learning and memory, paralleled by differential expression of the glucocorticoid receptor and GABAergic genes.