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Science is a branch of scholarship: it provides explanations for material phenomena in terms of matter and energy. Medicine by contrast is a trade: it applies scientific knowledge but also requires nonscientific skills such as empathy. Neurochemistry is the science that deals with the molecules that make up nervous systems and with their interactions. Neurology and psychiatry are the trades of those...
Cellular homeostasis, maintenance of the balance of life and death at the cellular level, is essential for tissue integrity from development through senescence. During development of the nervous system programmmed cell death is responsible for establishing the number of neurons and shaping the nervous system. After development the majority of the postmitotic neurons should live for the life of the...
The use of animals as models of neurodegenerative disorders has allowed the determination of biological targets and biomarkers of several diseases, has yielded new therapeutical perspectives, and is essential before performing novel clinical assays. This review discusses the nature, use, and limits of animal models and how to obtain them for several neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple system...
The consequences of malnutrition on the central nervous system are diverse and depend to a significant extent on the stage of development or maturity of the brain as well as on the severity of the nutritional deficiency. For example, vitamin deficiencies result in a wide range of neuropathology and neuropsychiatric symptomatology depending upon the nature and extent of the vitamin deficiency. The...
In the brain, the transport of water and solute is precisely regulated. This maintains a stable and unique microenvironment that is critical to brain function. Cerebral edema results from the excess of fluid in the brain’s intra- and extracellular spaces. This occurs in response to a wide variety of insults, including cerebral ischemia, hypoxia, infection, brain tumors, and neuroinflammation. Cytotoxic...
The monoamine neurotransmitters control a variety of functions including movement, appetite, mood, reward, and memory. The monoamine transporters are responsible for the termination of synaptic signaling by removing neurotransmitters from the synaptic cleft. Altered monoaminergic transporter function has been implicated in the pathology of disease states such as depressionDepression , anxietyAnxiety...
Diseases of the brain account for much human suffering and place a huge burden on the health care systems. Thus, research into the pathology of brain diseases and improved pharmacotherapy is of significant value. In this respect, knowledge on malfunctions of metabolic homeostasis related to the neurotransmission process is still limited. As evident from this chapter, failure of the metabolic homeostasis...
Mental retardation (MR) is generally defined as a global reduction in cognitive abilities, which manifests before the age of 18. The causes of MR are extremely heterogeneous, including environmental factors as well as genetic changes, such as chromosomal abnormalities and single-gene mutations. Great progress has been made in recent years towards the identification of MR genes, particularly X-linked...
Among the most important neurodegenerative disorders affecting aging adults around the world are Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which affects around 4.5 million people in the United States, and Parkinson’s disease (PD), which has a prevalence of about 160 cases per 100,000 people and an incidence of about 20 cases per 100,000 people per year. In both disorders prevalence and incidence increase with age...
Nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) is a family of major transcription factors that play various important roles under physiological and pathological conditions. NF-κB transcription factors are ubiquitously expressed, including neurons and glial cells of the central nervous system (CNS). The roles of NF-κB family in the CNS, both as mediators of transcriptional response to synaptic activity and in behavioral...
Many diseases, most with a strong neurodegenerative component, are now known to result from an expansion of a trinucleotide repeat sequence within the genome. In many cases, the longer the repeat the earlier the onset, and the more rapid and severe is the disease progression. Almost all of these diseases may be divided into three groups. In the first group, the expansion is either in an untranslated...
The first description of the inflammatory process appeared as early as the first century AD. Among the first things learned about inflammation is that vascular permeability is increased and leukocyte extravasation occurs. It is now realized that the central nervous system (CNS) is not as devoid of immune cell entrance as once believed and that neuroinflammation can occur. Even in the CNS absence of...
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by presence of social deficits, language abnormalities, stereotypies, and repetitive behavior. Brain pathology is extensive, suggesting widespread dysfunction of neurotransmitter systems. Genetic, biochemical, and gene association studies have shown that a number of neurotransmitters including serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, GABA and glutamate,...
RNA is not a simple intermediate linking DNA and protein. RNA is widely transcribed from a variety of genomic regions, and extensive studies on the functional roles and regulations of noncoding RNAs including antisense RNAs and small RNAs are in progress. In addition, the human genome project revealed that we humans carry as few as ∼22,000 genes. Humans exploit tissue-specific and developmental stage-specific...
It is well known that a multitude of ligands and receptors are involved in the nociceptive system, and some of them increae, whereas others inhibit the pain sensation both peripherally and centrally. These substances, including neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, hormones, cytokines, and the like, may modify the activity of nerves involved in the pain pathways. The organism itself can express very...
Demyelinating diseases are those in which myelin is the primary target of damage on the basis of neuroradiological, neuropatholgical, neurochemical, and genetic studies. This review describes the morphological aspects of the myelin sheath which is the most abundant membrane structure in the vertebrate nervous system. It is made of oligodendrocytes in the CNS and Schwann cells in the PNS. It comprises...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly and is characterized by senile plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, synapse loss, and progressive neuronal deficits. There is an abundance of evidence suggesting that oxidative stress is involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Several investigations have revealed the presence of oxidation products of proteins, lipids,...
Oxidative stress is an early event in the development of Alzheimer disease (AD), preceding classic fibril formation which eventually deposits as amyloid-β senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles composed of tau protein. Mitochondrial and metallic abnormalities are likely precursors of oxidative stress during the early stages of AD and, under degenerative conditions, the capacity of neurons to maintain...
Tau protein is a neuronal microtubule associated protein, which localizes primarily in the axon. It plays a major role in promoting microtubule assembly, stabilizing microtubules and maintaining the normal morphology of the neurons. Structurally tau is a heterogenous molecule due to several posttranslational modifications. Tauopathies are a group of disorders that are the consequence of abnormal tau...
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