A joint publication of BMC, part of Springer Nature, and the Editorial Group of Molecular Brain since 2008.
Molecular Brain is affiliated with the Association for the Study of Neurons and Disease (AND).
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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of memory and cognitive function. A key neuropathological event in AD is the accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide. T...
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the targets of a large number of drugs currently in therapeutic use. Likewise, the glutamate ionotropic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) has been implicated in certain...
Mammalian sires participate in infant care. We previously demonstrated that sires of a strain of nonmonogamous laboratory mice initiate parental retrieval behavior in response to olfactory and auditory signals...
The RNA-binding protein tristetraprolin (TTP) participates in normal post-transcriptional control of cytokine and chemokine gene expression, dysregulation of which contributes to the HIV-associated neurocognit...
Intracellular Ca2+ regulates many aspects of neuronal function through Ca2+ binding to EF hand-containing Ca2+ sensors that in turn bind target proteins to regulate their function. Amongst the sensors are the neu...
During development both Hebbian and homeostatic mechanisms regulate synaptic efficacy, usually working in opposite directions in response to neuronal activity. Homeostatic plasticity has often been investigate...
αCaMKII plays central and essential roles in long-term potentiation (LTP), learning and memory. αCaMKII is activated via binding with Ca2+/CaM in response to elevated Ca2+ concentration. Furthermore, prolonged in...
NMDA receptors are ligand-gated ion channels with essential roles in glutamatergic synaptic transmission and plasticity in the CNS. As co-receptors for glutamate and glycine, gating of the NMDA receptor/channe...
In autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinsonism (PARK2), the pathogenetic process from the loss of function of a ubiquitin ligase parkin to the death of dopamine neurons remains unclear. A dominant hypothesis ...
Loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is a hallmark of various retinal diseases including glaucoma, retinal ischemia, and diabetic retinopathy. N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-type glutamate receptor (NMDAR)-media...
Down’s syndrome (DS) is caused by triplication of all or part of human chromosome 21 and is characterized by a decrease in the overall size of the brain. One of the brain regions most affected is the cerebellu...
Pain and natural rewards such as food elicit different behavioral effects. Both pain and rewards, however, have been shown to alter synaptic activities in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a key component of the br...
A long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), nuclear-enriched abundant transcript 1_2 (NEAT1_2), constitutes nuclear bodies known as “paraspeckles”. Mutations of RNA binding proteins, including TAR DNA-binding protein-43 (...
Type B GABA receptors (GABA Rs) play a critical role in synaptic transmission. We carried out studies to determine whether neuronal cell surface expression of GABAB-Rs might be regulated by the Nogo receptor 1...
Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), owing to their effective antimicrobial properties, are being widely used in a broad range of applications. These include, but are not limited to, antibacterial materials, the text...
Inflammation in injured tissue has both repair functions and cytotoxic consequences. However, the issue of whether brain inflammation has a repair function has received little attention. Previously, we demonst...
GSK3β is involved in a wide range of physiological functions, and is presumed to act in the pathogenesis of neurological diseases, from bipolar disorder to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In contrast, the GSK3α isoz...
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive, adult onset, fatal neurodegenerative disease of motor neurons. There is emerging evidence that alterations in RNA metabolism may be critical in the pathoge...
Bergmann glia (BG) are unipolar cerebellar astrocytes. The somata of mature BG reside in the Purkinje cell layer and extend radially arranged processes to the pial surface. BG have multiple branched processes,...
N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are regulated by several G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) as well as receptor tyrosine kinases. Serotonin (5-HT) type 7 receptors are expressed throughout the brain inc...
GABAA receptors are ligand-gated Cl- channels, and the intracellular Cl- concentration governs whether GABA function is excitatory or inhibitory. During early brain development, GABA undergoes functional switch f...
N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are critical for neuronal development and synaptic plasticity. Dysregulation of NMDARs is implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders. Native NMDARs are heteromultimeric pr...
Dravet syndrome is a devastating infantile-onset epilepsy syndrome with cognitive deficits and autistic traits caused by genetic alterations in SCN1A gene encoding the α-subunit of the voltage-gated sodium channe...
GABAergic deficit is one of the major mechanisms underlying epileptic seizures. Previous studies have mainly focused on alterations of synaptic GABAergic inhibition during epileptogenesis. Recent work suggeste...
Interneuron deficits are one of the most consistent findings in post-mortem studies of schizophrenia patients and are likely important in the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia. Disrupted-in-Schi...
The synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone (DEX) is commonly used to prevent chronic lung disease in prematurely born infants. Treatment regimens usually consist of high doses of DEX for several weeks, notably...
Fear is one of the most potent emotional experiences and is an adaptive component of response to potentially threatening stimuli. Cumulative evidence suggests that the amygdala plays a central role in the acqu...
Evidence suggests that there are aberrations in the vitamin D-endocrine system in subjects with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Here, we review the relationship between vitamin D and ALS. Vitamin D defici...
Loss of the translational repressor FMRP causes Fragile X syndrome. In healthy neurons, FMRP modulates the local translation of numerous synaptic proteins. Synthesis of these proteins is required for the maint...
Matrix metalloproteinases are important factors in the molecular mechanisms leading to neuronal injury in many neurological disorders. Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 is up-regulated after cerebral ischemia a...
Hippocampal N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) is required for spatial working memory. Although evidence from genetic manipulation mice suggests an important role of hippocampal NMDAR NR2B subunits (NR2B-NM...
Synaptosomal-associated protein, 25 kDa (SNAP-25) regulates the exocytosis of neurotransmitters. Growing evidence suggests that SNAP-25 is involved in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, attenti...
The editors of Molecular Brain would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 5 (2012).
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a classical form of associative learning, which depends on associative synaptic plasticity in the amygdala. Recent findings suggest that the central amygdala (CeA) plays an activ...
CaMKII is a major synaptic protein that is activated during the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) by the Ca2+ influx through NMDARs. This activation is required for LTP induction, but the role of the kina...
Group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR) are coupled via Gαq/11 to the activation of phospholipase Cβ, which hydrolyzes membrane phospholipids to form inositol 1,4,5 trisphosphate and diacylglycerol. In a...
Opioids are associated with wide inter-individual variability in the analgesic response and a narrow therapeutic index. This may be partly explained by the presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in...
Neuronal activity alters calcium ion (Ca2+) dynamics in astrocytes, but the physiologic relevance of these changes is controversial. To examine this issue further, we generated an inducible transgenic mouse model...
A consensus has famously yet to emerge on the locus and mechanisms underlying the expression of the canonical NMDA receptor-dependent form of LTP. An objective assessment of the evidence leads us to conclude t...
Astrocytes regulate neuronal excitability and synaptic activity by releasing gliotransmitters such as glutamate. Our recent study demonstrated that astrocytes release glutamate upon GPCR activation via Ca2+ activ...
The transplantation of neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/PCs) at the sub-acute phase of spinal cord injury, but not at the chronic phase, can promote functional recovery. However, the reasons for this differenc...
Loss of a sensory input causes the hypersensitivity in other modalities. In addition to cross-modal plasticity, the sensory cortices without receiving inputs undergo the plastic changes. It is not clear how th...
Extracellular acidification occurs in the brain with elevated neural activity, increased metabolism, and neuronal injury. This reduction in pH can have profound effects on brain function because pH regulates e...
Trigeminal neuropathic pain attacks can be excruciating for patients, even after being lightly touched. Although there are rodent trigeminal nerve research models to study orofacial pain, few models have been ...
Postsynaptic density (PSD)-95-like membrane-associated guanylate kinases (PSD-MAGUKs) are scaffold proteins in PSDs that cluster signaling molecules near NMDA receptors. PSD-MAGUKs share a common domain struct...
Insulin-like growth factor 2 (Igf2) is a paternally expressed imprinted gene regulating fetal growth, playing an integral role in the development of many tissues including the brain. The parent-of-origin specific...
Accumulated evidence has suggested that potentiation of cortical GABAergic inhibitory neurotransmission may be a key mechanism in the treatment of schizophrenia. However, the downstream molecular mechanisms re...
Notch signaling is well recognized as a key regulator of the neuronal fate during embryonic development, but its function in the adult brain is still largely unknown. Mind bomb-1 (Mib1) is an essential positiv...
Proper adjustment of moving direction after external mechanical stimulation is essential for animals to avoid danger (e.g. predators), and thus is vital for survival. This process involves sensory inputs, cent...
Glutamate is the major transmitter that mediates the principal form of excitatory synaptic transmission in the brain. It has been well established that glutamate is released via Ca2+-dependent exocytosis of gluta...
A joint publication of BMC, part of Springer Nature, and the Editorial Group of Molecular Brain since 2008.
Molecular Brain is affiliated with the Association for the Study of Neurons and Disease (AND).
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