Featured Review Cellscience Reviews Vol 4 No 1 ISSN 1742-8130

Physiological Functions of Neuropeptide S

Neuropeptide S (NPS) and its cognate receptor NPSR constitute a novel transmitter system in the brain. In the short time since its identification, significant progress has been made to identify physiological functions modulated by NPS. Based on the anatomical distribution of NPS and its receptor, initial experiments have focused on its possible involvement in sleep/wakefulness regulation and modulation of emotional states. These studies provided evidence that NPS induces behavioral arousal and promotes wakefulness by suppressing all stages of sleep. In addition, NPS was also found to attenuate behavioral measures of stress, evident as an anxiolytic-like profile. More recent studies have shown that NPS can also affect feeding behavior and might modulate the HPA axis. Caffeine treatment was found to regulate NPS and NPSR mRNA expression levels, implicating adenosine systems as part of the network that might regulate NPS functions. Interaction of the NPS system with other transmitter systems is currently under investigation to explain some of these functions from a network perspective.

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