The sphincter mechanism at the esophagogastric junction includes smooth muscle of the lower esophagus and skeletal muscle of the crural diaphragm (CD). Smooth muscle is known to be under the control of the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMV), while central nervous system (CNS) control of the CD is unknown. The main purposes of our study were to determine the CNS site that controls the CD an...

Functional connections between auditory fields on Heschl's gyrus (HG) and the acoustically responsive posterior lateral superior temporal gyrus (field PLST) were studied using electrical stimulation and recording methods in patients undergoing diagnosis and treatment of intractable epilepsy. Averaged auditory (click-train) evoked potentials were recorded from multicontact subdural recording arr...

The last two decades of the XX century and the beginning of the XXI century are marked with an increasing interest toward the application of magnetic fields for therapeutical purposes. Magnetotherapy provides non-invasive, safe and easy to apply methods to directly treat the site of injury, the source of pain and inflammation, as well as other types of injury. The 50 years of worldwide experien...

Agonist-stimulated desensitization of the beta2-adrenergic receptor (beta2AR) is caused by both a potent cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA)-mediated phosphorylation and a less potent, occupancy-dependent, G protein-coupled receptor kinase (GRK)-mediated phosphorylation that leads to beta-arrestin binding and internalization. In this study the kinetics of phosphorylation of the third intracellu...

Using whole-cell recording from CA1 hippocampal pyramidal neurons and minimal stimulation of Schaffer collaterals, we have studied what seem to be single synapses. Although the transmission at a putative single synapses is quite unreliable, the synapse can be made to release transmitter reliably in response to the second stimulus in a pair of stimuli that re presented in rapid succession (e.g.,...