Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by progressive loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra. However, studies of post-mortem PD brains have shown that not only DA neurons but also the noradrenergic (NA) neurons in the locus coeruleus degenerate, and that the NA neurodegeneration may be as profound, and also precede degeneration of the midbrain DA neurons. Previous studies...

The administration of 6-hydroxydopamine into the cerebroventricles of the rat produced a rapid and permanent decrease of norepinephrine in hippocampus due to an apparent degeneration of central catecholaminergic nerve terminals. The decrease in norepinephrine levels was accompanied by a decrease in the activity of the rate-limiting biosynthetic enzyme, tyrosine hydroxylase. However, the decreas...

The effect of the destruction of locus coeruleus noradrenergic (LC NA) projection on spontaneous predatory attack, predatory competition and food intake was studied in cats. Selective noradrenergic neurotoxin DSP-4 injected into LC caused 71% decrease of noradrenaline content in amygdala and 41% decrease in hypothalamus. Predatory behaviour, predatory competition as well as food intake remained...

Introduction: Estradiol is a neuroactive steroid, which is found in several brain areas such as locus coeruleus (LC). Estradiol modulates nociception by binding to its receptors and also by allosteric interaction with other membranebound receptors like glutamate and GABAA receptors. LC is involved in noradrenergic descending pain modulation. Methods: In order to study the effect of 17β-estra...

Acute renal failure (ARF) is mainly characterized by acute tubular necrosis. No significant change was found for mortality rates over the past few decades despite significant advances in supportive care. In recent years, great effort has been focused on traditional and herbal medicine, which is much less toxic than those agents conventionally used and which is nowadays considered as a novel the...

The ability to adaptively shift between exploration and exploitation control states is critical for optimizing behavioral performance. Converging evidence from primate electrophysiology and computational neural modeling has suggested that this ability may be mediated by the broad norepinephrine projections emanating from the locus coeruleus (LC) [Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. An integrative t...

Introduction. Histaminergic neurones are located in the tuberomammillary nucleus (TMN) of the posterior hypothalamus and project to most areas of the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, hypothalamus, and many brain stem nuclei (1,2). The central histaminergic neurones have important roles in the regulation of arousal, endrocrine and autonomic functions. The ascending histaminergic projection exerts a ...