BACKGROUND: Sensorimotor gating, measured as prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reaction (ASR), is disturbed in certain neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and Tourette's syndrome (TS). Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the centromedian-parafascicular complex (CM-Pf), globus pallidus internus (in rats the entopeduncular nucleus EPN), an...

Previous studies in the macaque monkey have identified a thalamic nucleus, the posterior portion of the ventral medial nucleus (VMpo), as a dedicated lamina I spinothalamocortical relay for pain and temperature sensation. The dense plexus of calbindin-immunoreactive fibres that characterizes VMpo in primates enables its homologue to be identified in the human thalamus by immunohistochemical lab...

introduction: gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (gnih) is believed to be an inhibitor of gonadotropin releasing hormone (gnrh) secretion. the role of gnih in lactational inhibition of gonadotropin secretion is not well known therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of lactation on expression of gnih in these nuclei of lactating and non-lactating rats. methods: ten postpa...

Small iontophoretic applications of Phaseolus vulgaris leucoagglutinin (PHA-L) were used in rats to study the efferent projections from a restricted region in the reticular formation of the caudal medulla: the subnucleus reticularis dorsalis (SRD). It was found that fibres from SRD project mainly to the spinal cord, the oral motor nuclei, the dorsal accessory inferior olive, the giganto- and pa...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has emerged as a novel therapy for the treatment of several movement and neuropsychiatric disorders, and may also be suitable for the treatment of Tourette syndrome (TS). The main DBS targets used to date in patients with TS are located within the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit involved in the pathophysiology of this syndrome. They include the ventralis oral...