Synapse
Animals repeatedly dosed with methamphetamine during a single day suffer damage to brain dopamine and serotonin terminals and show behavioral deficits. These methamphetamine regimens also produce long‐term reductions in dopamine agonist‐stimulated immediate‐early gene responses both in striatum and several cortical areas, but the mechanism(s) underlying these long‐lasting effects of methamphetamine...
The 70‐kDa mitochondrial heat shock protein, mortalin, is a ubiquitously expressed, multifunctional protein that is capable of binding the neurotransmitter, dopamine, within the brain. Dopamine dysregulation has been implicated in many of the abnormal neurological behaviors. Although studies have indicated that mortalin is differentially regulated in response to dopaminergic modulation, research has...
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is known as a successful treatment for severe depression. Despite great efforts, the biological mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of ECT remain largely unclear. In this study, animals received a single, 10, or 20 applications of electroconvulsive seizure (ECS), and then cell proliferation and apoptosis were investigated in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the...
Current literature suggests that serotonin (5‐HT) release within the ventral horn of the spinal cord plays a role in motor function. We hypothesized that endogenous 5‐HT release is involved in the recovery of motor function after spinal cord injury. To appreciate the functional parameters of regenerating serotonergic fibers, a microdialysis probe was stereotactically implanted in the ventral horn...
Asenapine is a novel psychopharmacologic agent being developed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Like clozapine, asenapine facilitates cortical dopaminergic and N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptor‐mediated transmission in rats. The facilitation of NMDA‐induced currents in cortical pyramidal cells by clozapine is dependent on dopamine and D1 receptor activation. Moreover, previous results show...
The short‐ and long‐term behavioral effects of cannabinoids differ in adolescent and adult rodents. Few studies though have examined the underlying neurochemical changes that occur in the brain following adolescent cannabinoid exposure. In this study, we examined the effect of treatment with the synthetic cannabinoid, HU210, on CB1 receptor density in the brain and on body weight in adolescent male...
This study was carried out to determine the roles of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors on the up‐regulation of α2/δ subunit of voltage‐gated Ca2+ channels (VGCCs) induced by methamphetamine (METH). In the conditioned place preference paradigm, METH‐induced place preference suppressed with gabapentin, an antagonist for α2/δ subunit. Under these conditions, the increase in α2/δ subunit expression was found...
Postsynaptic density protein‐95 (PSD‐95) is hypothesized to control the excitatory‐to‐inhibitory ratio and plays an important role in the regulation of hippocampal synaptic plasticity, synaptogenesis, and learning and memory. In this report, we used immunoblotting to study the effects of aging and ovariectomy (OVX) on the expression of PSD‐95 in the hippocampus of female rats. The results indicated...
High‐frequency stimulation (HFS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) alleviates the cardinal symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but the mechanisms underlying these clinical results remain to be clarified. The HFS of STN is associated with the release of dopamine (DA) in the striatum. This study examines possible mechanisms by which HFS–STN release DA. The experiments were performed in rats anesthetized...
Recent advances suggest that acetaldehyde mediates some of the neurobiological properties of ethanol. In a recent study, we have shown that ethanol elicits the phosphorylation of extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (pERK) in the nucleus accumbens and extended amygdala, via a dopamine D1 receptor‐mediated mechanism. The aim of this study was to determine whether acetaldehyde and ethanol‐derived acetaldehyde...
Cannabinoid‐type 1 (CB1) receptors are implicated in μ‐opioid receptor (μ‐OR)‐dependent reward ascribed partially to mesolimbic dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (Acb) shell. Thus, CB1 receptor gene deletion may preferentially alter the availability of μ‐ORs and/or dopamine innervation in this brain region, which is functionally distinct from the motor‐associated Acb core. To test this hypothesis,...
Acute activation of κ‐opioid receptors (KOR) decreases dopamine (DA) extracellular levels in both the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Also, the acute activation of KOR prevents alterations in behavior and neurochemistry occurring after repeated use of psychostimulants. Opposing to the acute effects, repeated administration of the KOR agonist, U‐6593, potentiates both...
José Vicente Negrete‐Díaz,
Eduardo Baltazar‐Gaytán,
María Elena Bringas,
Rubén Antonio Vazquez‐Roque,
more
Haloperidol is a potent dopamine receptor antagonist and used to treat psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. Recent clinical and preclinical studies demonstrated the overactivity of the nitric oxide (NO) system in schizophrenia. Neonatal ventral hippocampal (nVH) lesions in rats have been widely used as a neurodevelopmental model that mimics schizophrenia‐like behaviors. Here, we investigate...
The biplexiform cell (bpxRGC) is a relatively and recently discovered type of retinal ganglion cells. Like “ordinary” ganglion cells, bpxRGCs have dendrites arborizing within the inner plexiform layer. However, as distinct from other ganglion cells, they have dendrites ascending to the outer plexiform layer. To date, bpxRGCs have been found in mammals, amphibians, and teleost fishes (Cook et al. [1996]...
Recent research in the etiology of schizophrenia revealed that there may be some neurodevelopmental failures such as neuronal network incompetence in the brain of this disease, and neurotransmitters cannot function accurately or adequately. But, it is unknown precisely what kinds of deficit in neurotransmission may be existed histopathologically. We investigated the expression of vesicle monoamine...
To evaluate the binding characteristics of [3H]Ro15‐4513 with the central benzodiazepine (BZ) receptor, inhibition experiments of [3H]Ro15‐1788 and [3H]Ro15‐4513 were performed both in vitro and in vivo, using two BZ ligands, flunitrazepam (FNP), and ethyl‐β‐carboline‐3‐carboxylate (β‐CCE). FNP inhibited the binding of [3H]Ro15‐1788 and [3H]Ro15‐4513 in a dose‐dependent manner in the mouse cerebral...
The use of PET and SPECT endogenous competition‐binding techniques has contributed to the understanding of the role of dopamine (DA) in several neuropsychiatric disorders. An important limitation of these imaging studies is the fact that measurements of changes in synaptic DA have been restricted to the striatum. The ligands previously used, such as [11C]raclopride and [123I]IBZM, do not provide sufficient...
In a recent PET study, we demonstrated the ability to measure amphetamine‐induced DA release in the human cortex with the relatively high affinity dopamine D2/3 radioligand [11C]FLB 457 (Narendran et al., [2009] Synapse 63:447–461). The aim of this study was to evaluate the reproducibility and reliability of [11C]FLB 457 in the same imaging paradigm we used to measure amphetamine‐induced DA transmission...
Prenatal cocaine exposure induces cytoarchitectural changes in the embryonic neocortex; however, the biological mechanisms and type of cortical neurons involved in these changes are not known. Previously, we found that neural progenitor proliferation in the neocortical ventricular zone (VZ) is inhibited by cocaine; here, we examine the changes in cortical neurogenesis and migration of glutamate and...
Changes in α‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methylisoxazole‐4‐propionate receptor (AMPAR) surface expression in the rodent nucleus accumbens (NAc) are produced by cocaine exposure and implicated in addiction‐related behaviors. The direction of change depends on the animal's prior drug history. However, little is known about the effect of a single exposure to cocaine on AMPAR distribution in the NAc of untreated...