This thesis investigates the role played by regions of the prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum in the control of rats’ behaviour by Pavlovian conditioned stimuli, and in their capacity to choose delayed reinforcement. In this introduction, I will first consider the ways in which animals, particularly rats, represent in their brains relationships or associations between environmental stimuli ...

Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulating substance in the world. It is found in coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate, and many medications. Caffeine is a xanthine with various effects and mechanisms of action in vascular tissue. In endothelial cells, it increases intracellular calcium stimulating the production of nitric oxide through the expression of the endothelial nitric oxide syntha...

This review describes therapeutically relevant mechanisms of action of botulinum toxin (BT). BT's molecular mode of action includes extracellular binding to glycoproteine structures on cholinergic nerve terminals and intracellular blockade of the acetylcholine secretion. BT affects the spinal stretch reflex by blockade of intrafusal muscle fibres with consecutive reduction of Ia/II afferent sig...

DAX1 (dosage sensitive sex reversal (DSS), adrenal hypoplasia congenita (AHC) critical region on the X chromosome, gene 1) encoded by the gene NR0B1, is an unusual orphan nuclear receptor that when mutated causes AHC with associated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (HH), and when duplicated causes DSS. DAX1 expression has been shown in all regions of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-gonadal (HPA...

The pineal hormone melatonin is involved in photic regulations of various kinds, including adaptation to light intensity, daily changes of light and darkness, and seasonal changes of photoperiod lengths. The melatonin effects are mediated by the specific high-affinity receptors localized on plasma membrane and coupled to GTP-binding protein. Two different G proteins coupled to the melatonin rec...

This thesis investigates the role played by regions of the prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum in the control of rats’ behaviour by Pavlovian conditioned stimuli, and in their capacity to choose delayed reinforcement. In this introduction, I will first consider the ways in which animals, particularly rats, represent in their brains relationships or associations between environmental stimuli ...

we have studied the effect of amitriptyline, a tricyclic anti-depressant drug on several immune parameters of the balb/c mice in order to evaluate its immunomodulatory effects. results showed that amitriptyline will potentiates all of the immunocytes functions except for the production of pge2 by lps stimulated monocytes. we have also showed that amitriptyline can normalize the immunosuppressiv...

jasminum amplexicaule buch.-ham. (oleaceae) has been commonly used in the traditional medicine in dysentery, diarrhoea and bellyache in china. in the present work, the methanol extract of jasminum amplexicaule (jme) was examined for pharmacology on human colonic epithelial cell line t84 by the short-circuit current technique. the results showed that pretreatment of t84 cells with jme produced a...