Midbrain periaqueductal gray mater area (PAG) receives some afferents from anterolateral system, frontal cortex, and hypothalamus that inhibit pain through its descending pathway that synapses medial raphe nuclus (mrph) and finally terminates on spinal cord enkephalinergic interneurons in layers II and III. In the present study, the role of Ca+2–channels located on medial raphe nucleus neurons ...

ARIA, heregulin, neu differentiation factor, and glial growth factor are members of a new family of growth and differentiation factors whose effects have been assayed on Schwann cells, skeletal muscle cells, and mammary tumor cell lines. To gain insight into their roles in the CNS, we studied the expression of ARIA in the rat brain. We found ARIA mRNA in all cholinergic neurons throughout the C...

Narcolepsy is a lifelong illness characterized by persistent sleepiness, hypnagogic hallucinations, and episodes of motor paralysis called cataplexy. We have tested the hypothesis that a transient neurodegenerative process is linked to symptom onset. Using the amino-cupric silver stain on brain sections from canine narcoleptics, we found elevated levels of axonal degeneration in the amygdala, b...

Findings on the role of subcortical and cortical structures in mnemonic processes, obtained by means of the reversible functional inactivation technique, are reviewed. The main advantage of this method (subcortical or cortical administration of local anesthetics or tetrodotoxin) is that it provides information not only on "where" but also "when" and for "how long" these processes take place, th...

Glucocorticoids have been shown to influence trophic processes in the nervous system. In particular, they seem to be important for the development of cholinergic neurons in various brain regions. Here, we applied a genetic approach to investigate the role of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) on the maturation and maintenance of cholinergic medial septal neurons between P15 and one year of age by...

Learning of a behavior at a particular age during the postnatal period presumably occurs when the functional brain circuit mediating the behavior matures. The inability to express a learned behavior, such as inhibition, may be accounted for by the functional dissociation of brain regions comprising the circuit. In this study we tested this hypothesis by measuring brain metabolic activity, as re...

Midbrain periaqueductal gray mater area (PAG) receives some afferents from anterolateral system, frontal cortex, and hypothalamus that inhibit pain through its descending pathway that synapses medial raphe nuclus (mrph) and finally terminates on spinal cord enkephalinergic interneurons in layers II and III. In the present study, the role of Ca+2–channels located on medial raphe nucleus neurons ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The precise identification and measurement of the medial geniculate nucleus and lateral geniculate nucleus on MR imaging remain technically challenging because the thalamic nuclei are small structures. We compared the visualization of the medial geniculate nucleus and lateral geniculate nucleus on phase difference enhanced imaging with 3D high-resolution phase imaging, 2D...

Individual neurons in the medial septum and diagonal band fire in phase with, and appear to act as a 'pacemaker' of, the hippocampal theta rhythm. We investigated the relationships of periodic EEG both among various parts of the septum and with dorsal hippocampal theta recorded concurrently in freely moving rats. Most septal sites showed theta rhythm concurrent with hippocampal theta during loc...

We have studied the distribution of neurokinin A-like immunoreactive cell bodies and fibers in the cat brainstem. The densest clusters of perikarya containing the peptide were observed in the periaqueductal gray, inferior colliculus, postpyramidal nucleus of the raphe, medial nucleus of the solitary tract and in the lateral reticular nucleus. By contrast, the interpeduncular nucleus, magnocellu...