Since Cajal's day, numerous morphological and neurophysiological studies on the mesencephalic nucleus of the trigeminal nerve have accumulated (CAJAL, 1909; MAY and HORSLEY, 1910; WEINBERG, 1928; CORBIN and HARRISON, 1940; SZENTAGOTHAI, 1948; etc.). On the basis of these studies, it is generally accepted that the peripheral processes of the large unipolar cells terminate in the muscles of masti...

This report describes a 59-year old woman with a rare choroid plexus papilloma of the cerebellopontine angle presenting with trigeminal neuralgia. The patient was admitted complaining of a 12-year history of paroxysmal lancinating pain throughout the right side of her face. Treatment with carbamazepine, Chinese medicine and a peripheral neurectomy had not relieved the pain. At operation, a 0.5 ...

The organization of the emotion-related somatic motor behavior, including jaw movements, is governed not only by the cortical limbic system but also by the subcortical limbic system including the amygdala and hypothalamus. GABAergic neurons in the central amygdaloid nucleus (CeA) and glutamatergic neurons in the posterior lateral hypothalamus (PLH) exert inhibitory and excitatory influences, re...

Mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in many neurological disorders that only develop or are much more severe in adults, yet no methodology exists that allows for medium-throughput functional mitochondrial analysis of brain sections from adult animals. We developed a technique for quantifying mitochondrial respiration in acutely isolated adult rat brain sections with the Seahorse XF An...

The effects of acidic pH on several voltage-dependent ion channels, such as voltage-dependent K+ and Ca2+ channels, and hyperpolarization-gated and cyclic nucleotide-activated cation (HCN) channels, were examined using a whole-cell patch clamp technique on mechanically isolated rat mesencephalic trigeminal nucleus neurons. The application of a pH 6.5 solution had no effect on the peak amplitude...

The trigeminal loop in the brainstem comprises the innermost level of sensorimotor feedback in the rat vibrissa system. Anatomy suggests that this loop relays tactile information from the vibrissae to the motoneurons that control vibrissa movement. We demonstrate, using in vitro and in vivo recordings, that the trigeminal loop consists of excitatory pathways from vibrissa sensory inputs to vibr...

Nitric oxide (NO), a diffusible gas, is produced in the central nervous system, including the spinal cord dorsal horn and the trigeminal nucleus, the first central areas processing nociceptive information from periphery. In the spinal cord, it has been demonstrated that NO acts as pronociceptive or antinociceptive mediators, apparently in a concentration-dependent manner. However, the central r...

The physiological consequences of the noradrenergic (NE) hyperinnervation of the rat brain stem produced by neonatal administration of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) was studied in the motor trigeminal nucleus. Stimulation of the region of the lateral lemniscus, the source of the noradrenergic innervation of the nucleus, facilitated the masseteric reflex for up to 200 msec in both normal and hyperi...

ATP-gated cation channels (P2X receptors) exist on the soma of proprioceptive neurons in the trigeminal mesencephalic nucleus (MNV) in the brain stem. However, these pseudomonopolar neurons seem to receive no synaptic input to their soma; we therefore hypothesized that in MNV neurons, the P2X receptors of importance may be those located on their central terminal projections. Here, we show in tr...

The afferent projection pattern from individual vibrissae follicles was related to the distribution of cytochrome oxidase (CO) dark cell clusters in the trigeminal sensory nuclei of adult rats to determine whether segregated primary afferent projections limit the extent of the topographic reorganizations that can occur at the level of the brainstem on a short term basis after changes in sensory...