Reductionist attempts to dissect complex mechanisms into simpler elements are necessary, but not sufficient for understanding how biological properties like reward emerge out of neuronal activity. Recent studies on intracranial self-administration of neurochemicals (drugs) found that rats learn to self-administer various drugs into the mesolimbic dopamine structures-the posterior ventral tegmen...

Maternal aggression is under the control of a wide variety of factors that prime the females for aggression or trigger the aggressive event. Maternal attacks are triggered by the perception of sensory cues from the intruder, and here we have identified a site in the hypothalamus of lactating rats that is highly responsive to the male intruder--the ventral premammillary nucleus (PMv). The PMv is...

Iptakalim is a novel putative adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-sensitive potassium (K(ATP)) channel opener. In the brain, iptakalim is thought to act on the neuronal and astrocytic plasma membrane and/or mitochondrial K(ATP) channels. Because iptakalim demonstrates an action on the regulation of dopamine and glutamate release in the forebrain regions, we examined its potential antipsychotic efficac...

The present investigation used an antibody directed against the extracellular domain of the signal transducing nerve growth factor receptor, trkA, to reveal immunoreactive perikarya or fibers within the olfactory bulb and tubercle, cingulate cortex, nucleus accumbens, striatum, endopiriform nucleus, septal/diagonal band complex, nucleus basalis, hippocampal complex, thalamic paraventricular and...

The location of LH-RH producing neurons, the pathways and terminal distributions of their fibers in the newt, Cynops pyrrhogaster were studied immunohistochemically. The LH-RH positive perikarya are located in the nucleus of the diagonal band of Broca and the medial septal nucleus. No LH-RH immunoreactive neuronal perikarya could be detected in the diencephalon. The pathways of fibers originati...

The cytoarchitecture of the telencephalon of the Comoran coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, was analyzed in the context of recent advances in our understanding of telencephalic organization in lungfishes and amphibians, which constitute the sister group to coelacanths. In coelacanths, the telencephalon is divided into pedunculated olfactory bulbs, paired hemispheres, and an unevaginated telenceph...

Decrease in the directionality of water diffusion measured with fractional anisotropy (FA) on diffusion tensor imaging has been linked to loss of myelin and axons in the white matter. Fornix FA is consistently decreased in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Furthermore, decreased fornix FA is one of the earliest MRI abnormalities observed in cognitively ...

Tryptamine, an endogenous trace amine, is currently postulated to be a neuromodulator or neurotransmitter in the mammalian CNS. High-affinity binding sites have been described for tryptamine in rat brain homogenate preparations. The present study further characterizes tryptamine binding throughout the CNS and delineates its distribution using in vitro receptor binding in conjunction with autora...