Cordyceps militaris has been used extensively as a crude drug and a folk tonic food in East Asia due to its various pharmacological activities. Our study aims to investigate the effect of Cordyceps militaris fruit body extract (CM) on antifatigue in mouse model. Two week CM administration significantly delayed fatigue phenomenon which is confirmed via rotating rod test, forced swimming test and...

background: in some disorders such as diabetes mellitus patients can display depressive symptoms. metformin is among the first-line treatments for management of the type 2 diabetes mellitus which may have some anti-depressant effect. objective: current investigation was performed to examine the anti-depressant effects of metformin and the involvement of nitric oxide (no) in this way, in an expe...

Exposure to early stressful adverse life events may increase vulnerability to psychopathology in adult life. There are important memory disturbances in stress-related psychiatric disorders. Therefore, there is much interest in understanding the mechanisms responsible for interactions between stress and cognition. Male Wistar rats that experienced 3-h daily separations from the dam during the fi...

In China, moxibustion is reported to be useful and has few side effects for chronic fatigue syndrome, but its mechanisms are largely unknown. More recently, the focus has been on the wealth of information supporting stress as a factor in chronic fatigue syndrome, and largely concerns dysregulation in the stress-related hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. In the present study, we aimed to deter...

The cerebellum is not only essential for motor coordination but is also involved in cognitive and affective processes. These functions of the cerebellum and mechanisms of their disorders in cerebellar injury are not completely understood. There is a wide spectrum of cerebellar mutant mice which are used as models of hereditary cerebellar degenerations. Nevertheless, they differ in pathogenesis ...

BACKGROUND Ganoderma lucidum is a popular medicinal mushroom used for promoting health and longevity in Asian countries. Previously, we reported that a water-soluble extract from a culture medium of Ganoderma lucidum mycelia (MAK) exerts antioxidative and cerebroprotective effects against ischemia-reperfusion injury in vivo. Here, we evaluated the antidepressant and anxiolytic activities of MAK...

The anticonvulsant drug lamotrigine has been shown to produce strong antidepressant effects in the treatment of patients with bipolar disorder. However, to date there are few preclinical reports on its behavioral actions in animal models of depression or its underlying molecular mechanisms. The current study investigated the effects of lamotrigine in the forced swimming test and the learned hel...

Individual differences indicate stronger phenotypes than model animals especially in behavioral studies, and some animals show unexpected behaviors in control and animal model groups. High-throughput analysis including cDNA microarray analysis are more affected by individual differences, because more samples are needed to reduce the difference in multiple factor analysis than single factor anal...

The present study was designed to investigate the central nervous system activity of 23 novel phenylpiperazine pyrrolidin-2-one derivatives. These compounds had marked antiarrhythmic and hypotensive activities and revealed affinity for α1- and α2-adrenoceptors. These effects may be related to their α-adrenolytic properties. We assessed their antidepressant-like effect in the forced swimming tes...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential benefits of ethanolic extract of Smilax china Linn. on testicular antioxidant activity and spermatological parameters in rats subjected to forced swimming stress. Animals of the experimental groups except vehicle control were subjected to forced swimming stress (FSS) 15 min/day for 52 days. Animals were pretreated with two doses of e...