Since its discovery as a putative neurotransmitter in the CNS, several functional roles have been suggested for nitric oxide (NO). However, few studies have investigated the role of NO in natural physiology. Because NO synthase (NOS) has been localized in regions believed to be important for attention and arousal, we hypothesized that NO production would be state-dependent. To test this hypothe...

Voltage-sensitive dye imaging of mouse thalamocortical slices demonstrated that electrical stimulation of the centrolateral intralaminar thalamic nucleus (CL) resulted in the specific activation of thalamic reticular nucleus, striatum/putamen, and cortical layers 5, 6, and 1. By contrast, ventrobasal (VB) thalamic stimulation, while activating the reticular and basal ganglia nuclei, also activa...

During behavioral quiescence, the neocortex generates spontaneous slow oscillations that consist of Up and Down states. Up states are short epochs of persistent activity that resemble the activated neocortex during arousal and cognition. Although Up states are generated within the cortex, the impact of extrinsic (thalamocortical) and intrinsic (intracortical) inputs on the persistent activity i...

The mechanism of essential tremor (ET) is unclear. Animal models of tremor and functional imaging studies in ET predict that the cerebellum and a cerebellar recipient thalamic nucleus (ventral intermediate, Vim) should exhibit oscillatory activity during rest and during tremor due to abnormal olivo-cerebellar activity. Physiologic responses of 152 single neurons were recorded during awake mappi...

There have been relatively few electrophysiological studies, in any species, describing the supraspinal processing of inputs from the male genital tract. The thalamus was the focus of the present study. In 11 urethan-anesthetized male rats, subregions of the thalamus were surveyed for neuronal responses to the search stimulus, bilateral electrical stimulation of the dorsal nerve of the penis (D...

The synchronization of fast (mainly 30 to 40 Hz) oscillations in intrathalamic and thalamocortical (TC) networks of cat was studied under ketamine-xylazine anesthesia and in behaving animals by means of field potential, extra- and intracellular recordings from multiple sites in the thalamic reticular (RE) nucleus, dorsal (sensory, motor, and intralaminar) thalamic nuclei, and related neocortica...

The mechanism(s) by which anesthetics reversibly suppress consciousness are incompletely understood. Previous functional imaging studies demonstrated dynamic changes in thalamic and cortical metabolic activity, as well as the maintained presence of metabolically defined functional networks despite the loss of consciousness. However, the invasive electrophysiology associated with these observati...

Partial shading reduces the power output of solar modules, generates several peak points in P-V and I-V curves and shortens the expected life cycle of inverters and solar panels. Electrical array reconfiguration of PV arrays that is based on changing the electrical connections with switching devices, can be used as a practical solution to prevent such problems. Valuable studies have been perfor...

BACKGROUND In auditory fear conditioning, the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) integrates a conditioned stimulus (CS) from the auditory thalamus (MGN) and the auditory association cortex (Te3) with an aversive unconditioned stimulus. The thalamic input provides a basic version of the CS, while the cortical input provides a processed representation of the stimulus. Dopamine (DA) is released ...

Avian song learning shares striking similarities with human speech acquisition and requires a basal ganglia (BG)-thalamo-cortical circuit. Information processing and transmission speed in the BG is thought to be limited by synaptic architecture of two serial inhibitory connections. Propagation speed may be critical in the avian BG circuit given the temporally precise control of musculature duri...