Neuroscience
-
Kainic acid (KA) administration is known to cause seizures and neuronal death in the hippocampus. High-frequency stimulation (HFS) of the hippocampus can be a promising method in the treatment of epilepsy while the mechanism of action is unknown yet. It remains unknown whether HFS is neuroprotective for hippocampal neurons following KA-induced seizures in macaques, although HFS has neuroprotective effects in animal models of Parkinson's disease. ⋯ In addition, administration of KA led to marked neuronal apoptosis in the hippocampus, accompanied by increased levels of Bax, activated caspase-3 and decreased levels of Bcl-2. HFS was found to attenuate changes in apoptosis-related proteins and robustly decreased neuronal loss following KA administration. These data indicate that hippocampal HFS can protect hippocampal neurons against KA neurotoxicity, and that HFS neuroprotection is likely to operate with inhibition of apoptosis.
-
Recent studies have demonstrated that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) modulates cortical activity in the human brain. In the language domain, it has already been shown that during a naming task tDCS reduces vocal reaction times in healthy individuals and speeds up the recovery process in left brain-damaged aphasic subjects. In this study, we wondered whether tDCS would influence the ability to articulate tongue twisters during a repetition task. ⋯ No significant differences were observed among the three time points during the sham condition. We believe that these data clearly confirm that the left frontal region is critically involved in the process of speech repetition. They are also in line with recent evidence suggesting that frontal tDCS might be used as a therapeutic tool in patients suffering from articulatory deficits.
-
Multisensory integration has been widely studied in neurons of the mammalian superior colliculus (SC). This has led to the description of various determinants of multisensory integration, including those based on stimulus- and neuron-specific factors. The most widely characterized of these illustrate the importance of the spatial and temporal relationships of the paired stimuli as well as their relative effectiveness in eliciting a response in determining the final integrated output. ⋯ The results show that neuronal responsiveness changes dramatically with changes in stimulus location - highlighting a marked heterogeneity in the spatial receptive fields of SC neurons. More importantly, this receptive field heterogeneity played a major role in the integrative product exhibited by stimulus pairings, such that pairings at weakly responsive locations of the receptive fields resulted in the largest multisensory interactions. Together these results provide greater insight into the interrelationship of the factors underlying multisensory integration in SC neurons, and may have important mechanistic implications for multisensory integration and the role it plays in shaping SC-mediated behaviors.
-
In the central nervous system, the normal development of neuronal circuits requires adequate temporal activation of receptors for individual neurotransmitters. Previous studies have demonstrated that α₂-adrenoceptor (α₂-AR) activation eliminates spontaneous action potentials of interneurons in the cerebellar molecular layer (MLIs) and subsequently reduces the frequency of spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) in Purkinje cells (PCs) after the second postnatal week. The magnitude of the α₂-adrenergic reduction in sIPSC frequency is enhanced during the third postnatal week because of an increase in firing-derived sIPSCs. ⋯ After the second postnatal week, NA transiently increased the sIPSC frequency, whereas blocking α₂-ARs sustained the noradrenergic sIPSC facilitation and increase in the firing rate of MLIs, suggesting that α₂-AR activation suppresses the noradrenergic facilitation of GABAergic synaptic transmission. The simultaneous activation of α₁- and β-ARs by their specific agonists mimicked the persistent facilitation of sIPSC frequency, which required extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 activation. These findings indicate that NA acts as a neurotrophic factor that strengthens GABAergic synaptic transmission in the developing cerebellar cortex and that α₂-ARs temporally restrain the noradrenergic facilitation of sIPSCs after GABAergic synaptogenesis.
-
In the trigeminal ganglion (TG), satellite glial cells (SGCs) form a functional unit with neurons. It has been proposed that SGCs participate in regulating extracellular glutamate levels and that dysfunction of this SGC capacity can impact nociceptive transmission in craniofacial pain conditions. This study investigated whether SGCs release glutamate and whether elevation of TG glutamate concentration alters response properties of trigeminal afferent fibers. ⋯ Glutamate-evoked discharge was attenuated bythe N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist 2-amino-5-phosphonovalerate (APV) and increased by TFB-TBOA, whereas mechanical sensitization was only sensitive to APV. Antidromic invasion of muscle afferent fibers by electrical stimulation of the caudal brainstem (10 Hz) or local anesthesia of the brainstem with lidocaine did not alter glutamate-induced mechanical sensitization. These findings provide a novel mechanism whereby dysfunctional trigeminal SGCs could contribute to cranial muscle tenderness in craniofacial pain conditions such as migraine headache.