Spinal cord slice preparation and intracellular recording techniques were used to examine the effects of phorbol esters on the sodium- and calcium-dependent action potentials, the excitatory synaptic transmission, the basal (resting) and the dorsal root stimulation-evoked release of 9 endogenous amino acids, including glutamate and aspartate, and the responsiveness of the rat dorsal horn neuron...

Neuroblastoma cells with electrically excitable membranes were fused with electrically passive L cells having a hitherto undescribed electrical marker. Hybrid cells, examined 10-40 generations after fusion, were found to be electrically excitable. The results show that at least a part of the genetic information for neuron differentiation can be functionally expressed in N x L hybrid cells. Evid...

Activity-dependent processes in slowly conducting afferents have been shown to modulate conduction and receptive properties, but it is not known how the frequency of action potential firing determines the responses of such fibers to mechanical stimulation. We examined the responses of slowly conducting meningeal afferents to mechanical stimuli and the influence of preceding action potential act...

One of the main characteristics of central sensitization associated with postinjury pain and chronic pain is increased excitability of the dorsal horn neurons in the spinal cord. Two electrophysiological features associated with the origin and modulation of central sensitization are wind-up of action potential frequency and long-term potentiation (LTP), which have been demonstrated previously i...

Modafinil (MOD) exhibits therapeutic efficacy for treating sleep and psychiatric disorders; however, its mechanism is not completely understood. Compared with other psychostimulants inhibiting dopamine (DA) uptake, MOD weakly interacts with the dopamine transporter (DAT) and modestly elevates striatal dialysate DA, suggesting additional targets besides DAT. However, the ability of MOD to induce...

The effects of the benzamide derivatives, (-)-sulpiride, sultopride and nemonapride, on spontaneous and electrically evoked dopamine (DA) release from striatal slices of rats were investigated. Nemonapride at concentrations of 100 nM or higher caused a dose-dependent increase in spontaneous DA release from the slices. (-)-Sulpiride and sultopride had little effect on spontaneous DA release. The...

This study investigated the effect of attention on the contrast response curves of steady-state visual evoked potentials (VEPs) to counter-phased sinusoidal gratings. The 1 cyc/deg gratings were modulated either in luminance or chromaticity (equiluminant red-green). The luminance grating counter-phased at 9 Hz (to favour activation of the magno-cellular system), and the chromatic grating at 2.5...