Scopolamine is a high affinity muscarinic antagonist that is used for the prevention of post-operative nausea and vomiting. 5-HT3 receptor antagonists are used for the same purpose and are structurally related to scopolamine. To examine whether 5-HT3 receptors are affected by scopolamine we examined the effects of this drug on the electrophysiological and ligand binding properties of 5-HT3A rec...

Proguanil is an antimalarial prodrug that is metabolized to 4-chlorophenyl-1-biguanide (CPB) and the active metabolite cycloguanil (CG). These compounds are structurally related to meta-chlorophenyl biguanide (mCPBG), a 5-hydroxytryptamine 3 (5-HT3) receptor agonist. Here we examine the effects of proguanil and its metabolites on the electrophysiology and ligand-binding properties of human 5-HT...

Hoodia gordonii is a plant species used traditionally in southern Africa to suppress appetite. Recently, it has been associated with a significant increase in blood pressure and pulse rate in women, suggesting sympathomimetic activity. The present study investigated the possible antidepressant-like effects of acute and repeated (15 days) administration of H. gordonii extract (25 and 50 mg/kg, p...

Fast chemical communications in the nervous system are mediated by several classes of receptor channels believed to be independent functionally and physically. We show here that concurrent activation of P2X2 ATP-gated channels and 5-HT3 serotonin-gated channels leads to functional interaction and nonadditive currents (47-73% of the predicted sum) in mammalian myenteric neurons as well as in Xen...

Fourteen subtypes of the serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) receptor have been delineated, and these subtypes are assigned to seven 5-HT receptor subfamilies (5-HT1-7). Among the 5-HT receptor subfamilies, the 5-HT type 3 (5-HT3) receptor is the only ionotropic receptor. Previous studies have reported abundant expression of the 5-HT3 receptor in the hippocampus, and the involvement in the mo...

Cortical circuits control higher-order cognitive processes and their function is highly dependent on their structure that emerges during development. The construction of cortical circuits involves the coordinated interplay between different types of cellular processes such as proliferation, migration, and differentiation of neural and glial cell subtypes. Among the multiple factors that regulat...