Domesticated chicks are precocial and therefore have relatively well-developed feeding behavior. The role of hypothalamic neuropeptides in food-intake regulation in chicks has been reported for decades. However, we hypothesized that nutrients and their metabolites in the brain may be involved in food intake in chicks because these animals exhibit a very frequent feeding pattern. Therefore, the ...

Several lines of evidence suggest that Wnt genes play a critical role in regulating development of the vertebrate embryo. To address the role that this family may play in the development of the chicken central nervous system (CNS), we have used a PCR based strategy to clone partial sequences for Wnt genes. At least six different Wnt genes are expressed in the developing CNS of the chick embryo....

Neural precursors derived from embryonic stem cells, but not those from fetal ventral mesencephalon, maintain the potential to differentiate into dopaminergic neurons after expansion in vitro ABSTRACT Neural precursors (NP) derived from ventral mesencephalon (VM) normally generate dopaminergic (DA) neurons in vivo but lose their potential to differentiate into DA neurons during mitogenic expans...

When grafted ectopically into the diencephalon of a chick host embryo, a portion of met-mesencephalon straddling the met-mesencephalic constriction has the capacity to induce En-2 expression in the surrounding host tissue. Subsequently, tectal and cerebellar structures, composed of both host and grafted cells, are reconstructed in this ectopic location at the expense of the host diencephalon. P...

Pax7 is a member of the highly conserved Pax gene family that is expressed in restricted zones of the central nervous system (CNS) during development, being involved in early brain regionalization and the maintenance of the regional identity. Using sensitive immunohistochemical techniques we have analyzed the spatiotemporal pattern of Pax7 expression in the brain of the anuran amphibian Xenopus...

Recently, Evans and Freeman I have described an amphophilic, aerobic, pleomorphic, green-producing streptococcus which they obtained from nasal washings, the heart blood, and the mesencephalon of a patient who died during an acute attack of epidemic encephalitis. This organism appeared in tubes of chopped meat medium inoculated with the washings, or a few drops of heart blood, or with small pie...

The avian nucleus of the basal optic root (nBOR) is a visual structure involved in the optokinetic response. nBOR consists of several morphologically distinct cell types, and in the present study, we sought to determine if these different cell types had differential projections. Using retrograde tracers, we examined the morphology and distribution of nBOR neurons projecting to the vestibulocere...

Dopaminergic neurons in the ventral mesencephalon (the ventral mesencephalic dopaminergic complex) are known for their role in a multitude of behaviors, including cognition, reward, addiction and voluntary movement. Dysfunctions of these neurons are the underlying cause of various neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression, addiction and schizophrenia. In addition, Parkinson's disease (PD),...