BACKGROUND A difficult problem in treating opioid addicts is the maintenance of a drug-free state because of the negative emotional symptoms associated with withdrawal, which may trigger relapse. Several lines of evidence suggest a role for the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 in opioid addiction; however, its involvement during opioid withdrawal is not clear. METHODS Mice were treated with ...

introduction: (s)- 3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (dhpg) is an agonist for group i metabotropic glutamate receptors. dhpg-induced synaptic depression of excitatory synapses on hippocampal pyramidal neurons is well known model for synaptic plasticity studies. the aim of the present study was to examine the effects of dhpg superfusion on excitatory synapses on pyramidal and fast-spiking gabaergic cel...

Glutamate is extensively and relatively uniformly distributed in the central nervous system (CNS) and its effects mediated by two distinct groups of receptors including Ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors. Concentration of glutamate in the nervous system is much higher than in other tissues. Glutamate receptors play an important role in synaptic transmission, neural plasticity and n...

Background Cocaine addiction continues to be a major heath concern, and despite public health intervention there is a lack of efficient pharmacological treatment options. A newly identified potential target are the group I metabotropic glutamate receptors, with allosteric modulators showing particular promise. Methods We evaluated the capacity of group I metabotropic glutamate receptors to in...

BACKGROUND Glutamatergic transmission is one of the main components of the stress response; nevertheless, its role in the emotional stress sequelae is not known. Here, we investigated whether interactions between group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 and metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 [mGluR5]) and Homer proteins mediate the delayed and persistent enhanc...

Changes in the expression of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) in the rat hippocampus in an animal model of depression. The aim of our study was to investigate the level of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in the brains of rats after chronic mild stress. Using Western blotting procedure we showed that the level of mGluR5 receptor protein was increased in CA1 and decreased in C...

Fragile X syndrome, the most commonly known genetic cause of autism, is due to loss of the fragile X mental retardation protein, which regulates signal transduction at metabotropic glutamate receptor-5 in the brain. Fragile X mental retardation protein deletion in mice enhances metabotropic glutamate receptor-5-dependent long-term depression in the hippocampus and cerebellum. Here we show that ...

The functional roles played by metabotropic glutamate receptors in the neostriatum is just beginning to be examined. One possibility, raised by previous studies, is that metabotropic glutamate receptors act to modulate responses mediated by ionotropic glutamate receptors. In the present study, we examined this possibility in a neostriatal brain slice preparation using intracellular recording an...