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. 2019 Jan 29;9:827. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-36822-1

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© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Dendritic spine connectivity in pyramidal neurons of the medial prefrontal cortex is illustrated as a function of genotype (HIV-1 Tg vs. control). Pyramidal neurons in HIV-1 Tg animals (B) displayed decreased dendritic branching complexity, with a decreased relative frequency of higher order branches relative to control animals (A) with no observed alterations in total dendrite length. Control animals exhibited a preponderance of thin spines on more proximal branches, receiving dopaminergic afferents from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and noradrenergic innervation from the locus coeruleus (LC). In sharp contrast, HIV-1 Tg animals displayed a preponderance of stubby spines on more proximal branches. Morphological characteristics of stubby spines, including the absence of a spine neck⁴⁵ and decreased postsynaptic density on the dendritic spine head⁵² suggest that HIV-1 Tg animals failed to receive appropriate dopaminergic afferents from the VTA and/or noradrenergic innervation from the LC. Illustrated here is the reception of dopaminergic and noradrenergic afferents on the dendritic spine neck, although other mechanisms are possible. Abbreviations: DA: Dopamine, DAT: Dopamine Transporter, DA1 Receptor: Dopamine Receptor D1, VMAT2: Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2, NE: Norepinephrine, NET: Norepinephrine Transporter, α_1A Receptor: Alpha-1A Adrenergic Receptor, α_1D Receptor: Alpha-1D Adrenergic Receptor, NMDAR: NMDA Receptor, AMPAR: AMPA Receptor, VGLUT: Vesicular Glutamate Transporter, mGLUR: Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor, EAAT2: Excitatory Amino Acid Transporter 2.