Neuroscience
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Synaptic plasticity, such as long term potentiation (LTP) and long term depression (LTD), underlies the cellular mechanism of learning and memory. Chemical-induced LTP (cLTP), which facilitates biochemical analysis of molecular changes in brain slices or neuronal cultures, has been accepted as an in vitro model to explore synaptic plasticity. cLTP, by either forskolin and rolipram (F&R) or glycine, is thought to be dependent on NMDA receptor. ⋯ Furthermore, an increased phosphorylation level of GluA1 at serine 845 by F&R-induced LTP rather than glycine-induced LTP was dependent on the activation of GluN2B, which is supported by the results from GluN2B antagonists, small interfering peptide and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated knock out of GluN2B. Taken together, we reveal the significant role of GluN2B in F&R-induced LTP, uncovering the role of GluN2B subunit of NMDA receptor in a specified cLTP.
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The human right inferior frontal cortex (IFC) plays a critical role in response inhibition. It has also been demonstrated that the IFC is heterogeneous and that the ventral part of the IFC (vIFC) is more critical to inhibition of prepotent response tendency. Recent areal parcellation analyses based on resting-state functional connectivity have revealed that the right vIFC consists of multiple functional areas. ⋯ Correlations were significantly stronger in the ventral parcel. Moreover, the ventral parcel exhibited a negative correlation between brain activity during response inhibition and stop-signal reaction time (SSRT), a behavioral measure used to evaluate stopping performance. These dissociation results suggest that the ventral region in the vIFC plays a more central role in the brain network by increasing brain activity, which may further predict better performance of response inhibition.
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The spontaneous action potential of isolated sinoatrial node (SAN) cells is regulated by a coupled-clock system of two clocks: the calcium clock and membrane clock. However, it remains unclear whether calcium clock inhibitors have a direct effect on the membrane clock. The purpose of this study was to investigate the direct effect of cyclopiazonic acid (CPA), a selective calcium clock inhibitor, on the function of the membrane clock of SAN cells. ⋯ These results indicate that the direct inhibition effect of CPA on the If current in SAN cells is both concentration- and time-dependent. The underlying mechanisms may involve slowing down steady-state activation and the downregulation of pacemaker channel protein expression.
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The fact that neurobiological research is reliant upon laboratory-reared rodents is well known. The following paper discusses this topic broadly, but also aims to highlight other species used in the study of the nervous system and the evolution of animal species usage from the end of World War II through recent investigations. ⋯ Such a limitation in animal species causes many difficulties in the development of new therapies for various neuropsychiatric diseases. Based on numerous scientific publications, the advantages of using a greater diversity of species in neuroscience and the disadvantages of focusing on mice and rats are presented.
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Our choices are often informed by temporally integrating streams of sensory information. This has been well demonstrated in the visual and auditory domains, but the integration of tactile information over time has been less studied. We designed an active touch task in which participants explored a spheroid-shaped object to determine its inclination with respect to the horizontal plane (inclined to the left or the right). ⋯ The behavioral results were fit with a bounded accumulation model and an independent sampling model that assumes no sensory accumulation. The results of model fits favor an accumulation-to-bound mechanism and suggest that participants integrate the first 600 ms of 1800 ms-long stimuli. This means that the somatosensory system benefits from longer streams of information, although it does not make use of all available evidence.