Although it has been long accepted that innervation by a taste nerve is essential for maintenance of taste buds, it is not clear what role, if any, innervation plays in the morphogenesis of taste papillae and taste bud development. The following study was undertaken to determine what effects lack of sensory innervation have on the development of taste papillae and the formation of taste buds in...

Studies have shown the existence of minor developmental cortical malformations, including microgyria, in the brains of dyslexics. Concomitant studies have shown that language-impaired individuals exhibit severe deficits in the discrimination of rapidly presented auditory stimuli, including phonological and nonverbal stimuli (i.e., sequential tones). In an effort to relate these results, male ra...

There is good evidence that forebrain serotonergic systems modulate cognitive flexibility. Latent inhibition (LI) is a cross-species phenomenon which manifests as poor conditioning to a stimulus that has previously been experienced without consequence and is widely considered an index of the ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. While much research has focused on dopaminergic mechanisms underly...

Growth factors possess neuroprotective and neurotrophic properties in vitro, but few have been extensively studied in vivo after stroke. In the present study, we investigated the potential functional benefits of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) administration after focal cerebral ischemia. Male mice underwent 60-minute middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) and received G-CSF (50 ...

Cumulative effects of repetitive mild head injury in the pediatric population are unknown. We have developed a cognitive composite dysfunction score that correlates white matter injury severity in neonatal piglets with neurobehavioral assessments of executive function, memory, learning, and problem solving. Anesthetized 3- to 5-day-old piglets were subjected to single (n = 7), double one day ap...

PURPOSE To confirm a previous report of metastasis enhancement by lithotripter shockwaves (LSW) and to test the hypothesis that this effect is attributable to cavitation. MATERIALS AND METHODS The metastatic B16-D5 melanoma cell line was implanted on the hind legs of female C57/b16 mice 12 days before tumor treatment. The tumors were treated with 500 LSW in a waterbath arrangement. The effect...

Compared to sham-operated controls, myofilaments from hearts of ovariectomized (OVX) rats demonstrate an increase in Ca2+ sensitivity with no change in maximum tension (Wattanapermpool J and Reiser PJ. Am J Physiol 277: H467-H473, 1999). To test the significance of this modification in intact cells, we compared intracellular Ca2+ transients and shortening of ventricular myocytes isolated from s...

In vivo microdialysis was used to measure the effects of partial deafferentation of cortical cholinergic inputs on acetylcholine efflux in young (four to seven months) and aged (24–28 months) male F344/BNNIA rats. Partial deafferentation was produced by bilateral infusions of the immunotoxin 192 immunoglobulin G-saporin (0.56 mg/1.0 ml) or its vehicle solution into the ventral pallidum/substant...

Neurobehavioral deficits in higher cortical systems have not been described previously in a large animal model of diffuse brain injury. Anesthetized 3-5 day old piglets were subjected to either mild (142 rad/s) or moderate (188 rad/s) rapid non-impact axial rotations of the head. Multiple domains of cortical function were evaluated 5 times during the 12 day post-injury period using tests of neu...