An 88-year-old right-handed man was admitted to our hospital for cognitive impairment and right-sided paralysis. His head non-contrast computed tomography (CT) showed large low-density areas (LDA) fibrous structures in the left occipital temporal lobe regions. Despite fact that it had been more than 10 years since his stroke, rehabilitation effective. This is a rare case which cerebellar culmen...

Increasing evidences show that the etiology of Parkinson's disease (PD) is multifactorial. Studying the combined effect of several factors is becoming a hot topic in PD research. On one hand, iron is one of the essential trace metals for human body; on the other hand, iron may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of PD. In our present study, the rats with increased neonatal iron (120 μg/g bodywe...

BACKGROUND How well the motor symptoms assessed by the motor section of the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS3) reflect the neuronal loss observed in the substantia nigra is not known. OBJECTIVE To study the relationships among the motor symptoms assessed by the UPDRS3, Lewy body-associated neuronal loss in the substantia nigra, and duration of disease. DESIGN Longitudinal, pros...

Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most common age-associated progressive neurodegenerative disorder, is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SN). The pathogenesis of PD and the mechanisms underlying the degeneration of DA neurons are still not fully understood. Our previous quantitative proteomics study revealed that hyaluronan and pro...

Iodinated SCH 23390, 125I-SCH 23982 (DuPont-NEN), was examined using quantitative autoradiography for its potency, selectivity, and anatomical and neuronal localization of binding to the dopamine D1 receptor in rat brain sections. 125I-SCH 23982 bound to D1 sites in the basal ganglia with very high affinity (Kd values of 55-125 pM), specificity (70-85% of binding was displaced by 5 microM cis-f...

The cause and mechanism of neuronal cell death in the substantia nigra of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are unknown. There is also controversy about whether the cell death results from a single event followed by cell loss consistent with aging or whether there is an ongoing pathologic process. Using postmortem tissue obtained from the Parkinson's Disease Society Brain Tissue Bank in Lo...

BACKGROUND Methylphenidate or a D1 dopamine receptor agonist induces reanimation (active emergence) from general anesthesia. The authors tested whether electrical stimulation of dopaminergic nuclei also induces reanimation from general anesthesia. METHODS In adult rats, a bipolar insulated stainless steel electrode was placed in the ventral tegmental area (VTA, n = 5) or substantia nigra (n =...

In situ hybridization was used to study the effect of 6-hydroxydopamine-induced damage to the midbrain dopaminergic neurons on the level of glutamate decarboxylase mRNA in globus pallidus neurons in the rat. Some animals received an injection of Fluoro-gold in the entopeduncular nucleus or the substantia nigra prior to the 6-hydroxydopamine lesion in order to identify glutamic acid decarboxylas...

BACKGROUND The occurrence of Parkinson's disease (PD) is known to be associated both with increased nigrostriatal iron content and with low serum cholesterol and PD, but there has been no study to determine a potential relationship between these two factors. METHODS High-resolution MRI (T1-, T2, and multiple echo T2*-weighted imaging) and fasting lipid levels were obtained from 40 patients wi...