IV POPULÄRVETENSKAPLIG SAMMANFATTNING VI LIST OF PUBLICATIONS VIII

A six month old boy had a mesencephalic melanotic neoplasm of the neuro-epithelial derivatives which produced mucin. Location in the mesencephalon and production of the mucin have not been described previously for this kind of intracranial tumour. The various cellular elements within the growth are in accord with diverse differentiations of the neuroepithelium of the neural tube, the neuroectod...

In the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) an important contingent of dopaminergic neurons are localized in the substantia nigra and in the ventral tegmental area of the ventral midbrain. They constitute an anatomically and functionally heterogeneous group of cells involved in a variety of regulatory mechanisms, from locomotion to emotional/motivational behavior. Midbrain dopaminergic neuron...

Trefoil factor 1 (TFF1) belongs to a family of secreted peptides with a characteristic tree-looped trefoil structure. TFFs are mainly expressed in the gastrointestinal tract where they play a critical role in the function of the mucosal barrier. TFF1 has been suggested as a neuropeptide, but not much is known about its expression and function in the central nervous system. We investigated the e...

In neural transplantation studies, there is an interest in identifying and isolating mesencephalic dopamine (mesDA) neuron precursors that have the capacity to differentiate into fully mature mesDA neurons after transplantation. We report here that in the developing ventral mesencephalon (VM) the proneural gene Neurogenin2 (Ngn2) is expressed exclusively in the part of the ventricular zone that...

During paradoxical sleep electrical stimulation of the mesencephalic reticular formation and emotiogenic structures in the mesencephalon and diencephalon produced depression or an increase in the theta rhythm of the hippocampal and entorhinal electrical activity. However, stimulation not involving behavioral arousal did not cause a transition from paradoxical phase into slow wave sleep. The ces...

The blood vessels (BV) of the brain stem show different patterns of development, and nutrient requeriments, metabolism and the activity of the different nuclei of the mesencephalon differ from one nucleus to another. The density of BV indirectly explains the blood flow intensity and physiological activity of the nuclei, and may explain the varying degrees of vulnerability of neurons to patholog...

The expression patterns of 13 GABAA receptor subunit encoding genes (alpha 1-alpha 6, beta 1-beta 3, gamma 1-gamma 3, delta) were determined in adult rat brain by in situ hybridization. Each mRNA displayed a unique distribution, ranging from ubiquitous (alpha 1 mRNA) to narrowly confined (alpha 6 mRNA was present only in cerebellar granule cells). Some neuronal populations coexpressed large num...

Epilepsy was induced by making freeze lesions bilaterally in the mesencephalic reticular formation of cats. The convulsive activity was an equivalent of the generalized status epilepticus, devaloping 15-20 min after the freeze lesions had been made. The animals died in this state 16-20 h after it had developed. The generalized seizure activity may have spread to rostra1 structures from the lesi...