Exposure to acute psychological or physical stress increases core body temperature (stress-induced hyperthermia, SIH) which is part of the autonomic stress response. SIH is used as a putative rodent anxiety paradigm in which anxiolytic drugs reduce the SIH response. The predictive validity of the SIH paradigm has proven to be good, making it suitable to detect the putative anxiolytic properties...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and the structurally related polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are abundant persistent organic pollutants that exert several comparable neurotoxic effects. Importantly, hydroxylated metabolites of PCBs and PBDEs have an increased neurotoxic potency. Recently, we demonstrated that PCBs can act as (partial) agonist on GABAA neurotransmitter receptors, with PC...

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In the central nervous system inhibitory neurotransmission is primarily achieved through activation of receptors for gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Three types of GABA receptors have been identified on the basis of their pharmacology and electrophysiology. The predominant type, termed GABAA and a recently identified type, GABAC, have integral chloride channels, whereas GABAB receptors couple t...

Pregnancy needs complex pathways that together play a role in proper growth and protection of the fetus preventing its premature loss. Changes during pregnancy and postpartum period include the manifold machinery of neuroactive steroids that plays a crucial role in neuronal excitability by local modulation of specific inhibitory receptors: the GABAA receptors. Marked fluctuations in both blood ...

Background Cerebellum is an area of the brain particularly sensitive to the effects of acute and chronic alcohol consumption. Alcohol exposure decreases cerebellar Purkinje cell output by increasing GABA release from Golgi cells onto extrasynaptic α6/δ-containing GABAA receptors located on glutamatergic granule cells. Here, we studied whether chronic alcohol consumption induces changes in GABAA...

Neurotransmitter receptor trafficking is fundamentally important for synaptic transmission and neural network activity. GABAA receptors and inhibitory synapses are vital components of brain function, yet much of our knowledge regarding receptor mobility and function at inhibitory synapses is derived indirectly from using recombinant receptors, antibody-tagged native receptors and pharmacologica...

Physiological properties of GABAA receptors from acutely dissociated rat dentate granule cells. Study of fast, GABAA receptor-mediated, inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) in hippocampal dentate granule cells has suggested that properties of GABAA receptors influence the amplitude and time course of the IPSCs. This study describes the physiological properties of GABAA receptors present on ...