Cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) has stimulatory effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis through direct effects on hypophysiotropic CRH neurons. Recently CART-containing axons have been demonstrated to densely innervate the hypophysiotropic CRH neurons. Based on the sources of the CART-immunoreactive (IR) innervation of the paraventricular nucleus, the putative or...

A clinicopathological report is presented of a British male, aged 59 years, who died after an illness of 10 years, manifested by progressive respiratory failure, ptosis, and dysphagia. At no time was there evidence of ophthalmoplegia, Parkinsonism or dementia. At necropsy the main finding was of neurofibrillary tangles in the neurons of the pontine and medullary reticular formation, with partic...

The aim of the present paper is to briefly review the changes occurring in the nucleus tractus solitarii and carotid body in response to hypoxic and hyperoxic injuries. Selective alterations of dendrites and Fos-immunoreactivity of neurons have been observed in the subnucleus gelatinosus of the nucleus tractus solitarii of adult subjects dying after hypoxic-ischaemic injury. The selective vulne...

The thalamic reticular nucleus is a thin layer of GABAergic cells located between the external medullary lamina and the internal capsule surrounding the rostolateral surface of the thalamus. It has functionally distinct afferent and efferent connections with thalamic nuclei, the neocortex, the basal forebrain and the brainstem. Parvalbumin is a calcium-binding protein, which is regarded to be a...

Injections of the retrogradely transported fluorescent dye, Evans blue, into the trigeminal nucleus caudalis were combined with the glyoxylic acid histofluorescence technique to determine the sources of catecholamine-containing varicosities innervating nucleus caudalis. Results indicate that the sources of this catecholamine innervation are widespread, originating from cell bodies throughout th...

Appetitive and consumatory sexual behaviors are critically dependant upon gonadal steroids, the medial preoptic area, and functional androgen receptors (AR). Utilizing the expression of the protein product of the immediate-early gene c-fos as a marker of behavior-dependent neural activation, anatomical sites involved in reproductive behavior have previously been colocalized with AR in regions o...

I N previous papers it has been shown that living nuclei of animal hemisphere cells of frog blastulae and early gastrulae can be transferred into enucleated eggs (Briggs & King, 1952,1953a). Approximately 20 per cent, to 40 per cent, of the recipient eggs cleave normally, and the majority of these develop into complete embryos, demonstrating that the transplanted nuclei are undifferentiated (i....

The medullary dorsal reticular nucleus (DRt) was recently shown to belong to the supraspinal pain control system; neurons within this nucleus give origin to a descending projection that increases spinal nociceptive transmission and facilitates pain perception [Almeida et al. (1999), Eur. J. Neurosci., 11, 110-122]. In the present study, the areas of the brain that may modulate the activity of D...

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by prominent autonomic failure with ataxia and/or parkinsonism. The leading cause of death in MSA is sudden death. We have shown that the early development of autonomic failure is an independent risk factor for sudden death. The depletion of sympathetic preganglionic neurons in the spinal intermediolateral cell column (...

Short-term correlations in activity have been widely used as evidence to connect brainstem units with postganglionic sympathetic nerves. These may be detected by spike-triggered averaging, cross correlation or coherence analysis. The specificity of this type of evidence has been investigated by cross-correlating the activity of identified cutaneous vasoconstrictor postganglionic fibres with tha...