PURPOSE The present study was undertaken to examine the involvement of nitric oxide (NO) and excitotoxicity in the development of hypoxia-induced retinopathy in adult rats. METHODS Retinas of adult rats were examined at 3 hours to 14 days after hypoxia. The mRNA and protein expression of endothelial, neuronal, and inducible nitric oxide synthase (eNOS, nNOS, and iNOS, respectively), hypoxia-i...

Reorganization of cortical representations after focal visual cortex lesions has been documented. It has been suggested that functional reorganization may rely on cellular mechanisms involving modifications in the excitatory/inhibitory neurotransmission balance and on morphological changes of neurons peripheral to the lesion. We explored functional reorganization of cortical retinotopic maps af...

Ionotropic excitatory amino acid (EAA) receptors are divided pharmacologically into three categories termed NMDA, AMPA/kainate, and high affinity kainate receptors. Each of these receptor subtypes is composed of a specific subset of subunits termed GluR1-4 (AMPA/kainate), GluR5-7, KA1-2 (high affinity kainate), and NMDAR1, 2 A-D (NMDA). Although colocalization of NMDA and non-NMDA receptors has...

AIMS To investigate the effects of resveratrol on cognitive impairment in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats and to explore the mechanisms of that phenomenon. METHODS Sixty healthy male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups: normal control group (Con group, n = 15), Res group (normal Sprague Dawley rats treated with resveratrol, n = 15), diabetes mellitus group (D...

The cloning of the glutamate-gated ion channels of the brain revealed an unexpected level of complexity: there are many different genes that encode distinct subunits of the receptor/channel complex and an even larger number of possible receptor subunit combinations. Many--nearly all--of these gene products are expressed in the retina, and the questions that we face today are: how are they used ...