As the resident immune cells in the central nervous system, microglia have long been hypothesised to promote neuroinflammation and exacerbate neurotoxicity. However, this traditional view has undergone recent revision as evidence has accumulated that microglia exert beneficial and detrimental effects depending on activation status, polarisation phenotype and cellular context. A variety of neuro...

However, the conducting properties of transporters go well beyond this simple picture (Sonders and Amara, Division of Biology California Institute of Technology 1996). For example, the 5-HT transporter is not electro-genic; yet it displays at least four distinct conducting Pasadena, California 91125 states (Mager et al., 1994). Three of these states are permeable to Na ϩ ions, and the other to ...

General anesthetics produce anesthesia by depressing central nervous system activity. Activation of inhibitory GABA(A) receptors plays a central role in the action of many clinically relevant general anesthetics. Even so, there is growing evidence that anesthetics can act at a presynaptic locus to inhibit neurotransmitter release. Our own data identified the neurotransmitter release machinery a...