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Recent advances in science enable new and closer insights into brain structure and function. The extent of CNS damage due to ischemia, or neurodegeneration can be followed by the use of modern brain imaging technology such as positron emission tomography (PET) or single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and radiolabeled tracers. Ex vivo the systematic use of gene expression arrays is becoming...
Stroke or cerebrovascular accident reduces blood flow and decreases oxygen supply (ischemia) in brain tissue. This may be resulted from vascular obstruction when a blood vessel is blocked or by hemorrhage when bleeding occurs into the brain tissue. Decrease in oxygen supply shifts pH to acidosis and increases extracellular K+ concentration, which depolarizes neural cell membrane. Anoxic depolarization...
In the brain, the most common lesion is ischemic and/or hypoxic by origin. The insult results in neuronal loss. The primary aim of therapeutic interventions to reduce the volume of brain damage and thus, to lessen the neurological impairment, disability and handicap among stroke survivors. Reduction in infarct size may also reduce the risk of early death, particularly due to ischemic cerebral edema...
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive loss of the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. Accumulating evidence indicates that apoptosis contributes to the cell death in Parkinson’s disease patients’ brain. Excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial respiratory failure are thought to be the key inducers of the apoptotic cascade...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 1 to 2% of the elderly population (aged > 65 years). It remains that from the clinical point of view, PD’s cardinal features are limited to four — tremor, rigidity, akinesia, and postural instability — and that customarily the unambiguous observation of at least two of the first three suffices to pose the clinical...
Epilepsy is a brain disorder affecting 0,5–1,0% of the population, characterised by recurrent seizures. Scizures are the result of excessive discharges of neo-or archi-cortical neurons firing in an abnormal synchrony. The symptomes and consequentes of seizures are determined by the function of the brain region from which the abnormal discharge originates, by the degree of spread to other structures...
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS). It is believed to be an immune-mediated disorder in which the myelin sheath or the oligodendrocyte is targeted by the immune system in genetically susceptible people. Oligodendrocytes synthesize and maintain the axonal myelin sheath of up to 40 neighbouring nerve axons in the CNS. Compact...
Nosologically, Alzheimer disease (AD) is no one single disorder. Evidence is provided that a small proportion of 5% to 10% of all Alzheimer cases is caused by missense mutations in presenilin 1 or 2 genes on chromosomes 14 and 1, or in APP gene on chromosome 21 leading to autosomal dominant familial AD with early onset. This difference of inheritance serves as the basis of the amyloid cascade hypothesis...
Neuron survival during adult life is the end-product of a delicate balance between intrinsic properties of neurons and environmental factors. Intrinsic properties of a neuron derive from genetic background, but also from all stimuli that affect neurons through the life, from prenatal development till aging. In fact, being most of neurons perennial cells, this means that a neuron in an eighty-year...
The kynurenine pathway is a major route for the conversion of tryptophane to NAD and NADP (Figure 1), leading to production of a number of biologically active molecules with neuroactive properties. During the last decades, the interest in kynurenines has been emerged as two major metabolites of this pathway, quinolinic acid (QUIN) and kynurenic acid (KYNA), act on glutamate receptors. QUIN was shown...
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