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The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) serves major executive functions. mPFC output to subcortical brain areas such as the amygdala controls emotional processing and plays an important role in fear extinction. I...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by selective degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN). The familial form of PD, PARK2, is caused by mutations in the
Axonopathy is critical in the early pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). Axonal swellings such as globules and spheroids are a dis...
GABA, the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in CNS, has been demonstrated to paradoxically produce excitation even in mature brain. However activity-dependent form of GABA excitation in cortical neurons has no...
Memories are stored within neuronal ensembles in the brain. Modern genetic techniques can be used to not only visualize specific neuronal ensembles that encode memories (e.g., fear, craving) but also to select...
Long-term memory is believed to be maintained by persistent modifications of synaptic transmission within the neural circuits that mediate behavior. Thus, long-term potentiation (LTP) is widely studied as a po...
Mercury is a well-known neurotoxin implicated in a wide range of neurological or psychiatric disorders including autism spectrum disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, depression, mood ...
In the olfactory system of malacostracan crustaceans, axonal input from olfactory receptor neurons associated with aesthetascs on the animal’s first pair of antennae target primary processing centers in the me...
Huntington’s disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease that is caused by the expansion of a polyglutamine (polyQ) stretch within Huntingtin (htt), the protein product of the HD gene. Alth...
Fragile X syndrome is caused by lack of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) due to silencing of the FMR1 gene. The metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in the central nervous system contribute to ...
Action potentials at the neurons and graded signals at the synapses are primary codes in the brain. In terms of their functional interaction, the studies were focused on the influence of presynaptic spike patt...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by episodic memory impairment that often precedes clinical diagnosis by many years. Probing the mechanisms of such impairment may provide much needed means of diagnosi...
Higher mammals such as primates and carnivores have highly developed unique brain structures such as the ocular dominance columns in the visual cortex, and the gyrus and outer subventricular zone of the cerebr...
The Notch signaling pathway has been shown to be involved in the development of the nervous system. Recent studies showed that Notch receptors and ligands are also expressed in the nervous system of adult anim...
There is mounting evidence for a neurodevelopmental basis for disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, in which prenatal or early postnatal events may influence brain development and predispose the young to...
The most frequent pain in patients with metastatic breast and prostate cancer is bone pain, which can be severe and difficult to treat. The mechanisms underlying this pain remain unclear. Here we investigated ...
Anxiety is a prevalent psychological disorder, in which the atypical expression of certain genes and the abnormality of amygdala are involved. Intermediate processes between genetic defects and anxiety, pathop...
Pain contains both sensory and affective dimensions. Using a rodent visceral pain assay that combines the colorectal distension (CRD) model with the conditioned place avoidance (CPA) paradigms, we measured a l...
Spinal glia, particularly microglia and astrocytes, are of the utmost importance in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. A recent study from our laboratory revealed that gabapentin, a recommended f...
Huntington’s Disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that clinically manifests as motor dysfunction, cognitive impairment and psychiatric symptoms. There is currently no cure for this progress...
It has been reported that remarkable and sustained activation of astrocytes and/or microglia occurs in cancer induced pain (CIP), which is different from neuropathic and inflammatory pain. The present study wa...
Caspases are a family of cysteine proteases that play key roles in programmed cell death (apoptosis). Mounting evidence in recent years shows that caspases also have important non-apoptotic functions in multip...
The analysis of the contributions to synaptic plasticity and memory of cAMP, PKA, CRE, CREB-1, CREB-2, and CPEB has recruited the efforts of many laboratories all over the world. These are six key steps in the...
Over-activation of AMPARs (α−amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionic acid subtype glutamate receptors) is implicated in excitotoxic neuronal death associated with acute brain insults, such as ischemic st...
Nerve cells program the brain codes to manage well-organized cognitions and behaviors. It remains unclear how a population of neurons and astrocytes work coordinately to encode their spatial and temporal activ...
Glutathione (GSH) plays an important role in neuronal oxidant defence. Depletion of cellular GSH is observed in neurodegenerative diseases and thereby contributes to the associated oxidative stress and Ca2+ dysre...
In the central nervous system (CNS), the muscarinic system plays key roles in learning and memory, as well as in the regulation of many sensory, motor, and autonomic processes, and is thought to be involved in...
A loss of function of the L-type calcium channel, Cav1.2, results in a cardiac specific disease known as Brugada syndrome. Although many Brugada syndrome channelopathies reduce channel function, one point muta...
Retinoid signaling pathways mediated by retinoic acid receptor (RAR)/retinoid × receptor (RXR)-mediated transcription play critical roles in hippocampal synaptic plasticity. Furthermore, recent studies have sh...
The neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is a cholinergic synapse that rapidly conveys signals from motoneurons to muscle cells and exhibits a high degree of subcellular specialization characteristic of chemical synap...
Although the cortex has been extensively studied in long-term memory storage, less emphasis has been placed on immediate cortical contributions to fear memory formation. AMPA receptor plasticity is strongly im...
During permanent memory formation, recall of acquired place memories initially depends on the hippocampus and eventually become hippocampus-independent with time. It has been suggested that the quality of orig...
An important limiting factor in the development of centrally acting pharmaceuticals is the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Transport of therapeutic peptides through this highly protective physiological barrier rema...
The neurocircuits that process somatic sensory information in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord are still poorly understood, with one reason being the lack of Cre lines for genetically marking or manipulating...
Calcium signalling plays a crucial role in the control of neuronal function and plasticity. Changes in neuronal Ca2+ concentration are detected by Ca2+-binding proteins that can interact with and regulate target ...
Wnt proteins are emerging key regulators of the plasticity and functions of adult brains. However, the mechanisms by which the expression of Wnt proteins is regulated in neurons are unclear. Using cortical pri...
Transient receptor potential melastatin 2 (TRPM2) is a calcium permeable non-selective cation channel that functions as a sensor of cellular redox status. Highly expressed within the CNS, we have previously de...
Deletions of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) accumulate to high levels in dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) in normal aging and in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Human nig...
A tonic form of synaptic inhibition occurs in discrete regions of the central nervous system and has an important role in controlling neuronal excitability. Recently, we reported that GABA present in astrocyte...
The contribution of different GluN2 subunits of the N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor to the induction of bidirectional hippocampal synaptic plasticity is a controversial topic. As both supporting and refut...
The small non-coding microRNAs play an important role in development by regulating protein translation, but their involvement in axon guidance is unknown. Here, we investigated the role of microRNA-134 (miR-13...
DIP (diaphanous interacting protein)/WISH (WASP interacting SH3 protein) is a protein involved in cytoskeletal signaling which regulates actin cytoskeleton dynamics and/or microtubules mainly through the activ...
Uncovering the mechanisms that regulate dendritic spine morphology has been limited, in part, by the lack of efficient and unbiased methods for analyzing spines. Here, we describe an automated 3D spine morphom...
Endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) is involved in several fundamental cellular processes and human diseases. Many mammalian ESCRT proteins have multiple isoforms but their precise functio...
Over the past decade, the use and development of optical imaging techniques has advanced our understanding of synaptic plasticity by offering the spatial and temporal resolution necessary to examine long-term ...
Transplantation of human neural stem/progenitor cells (hNSPCs) is a promising method to regenerate tissue from damage and recover function in various neurological diseases including brain ischemia. Galectin-1(...
The olfactory epithelium (OE) has a unique capacity for continuous neurogenesis, extending axons to the olfactory bulb with the assistance of olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs). The OE and OECs have been belie...
Galectins are a 15 member family of carbohydrate-binding proteins that have been implicated in cancer, immunity, inflammation and development. While galectins are expressed in the central nervous system, littl...
Protease activated receptor-1 (PAR1) is expressed in multiple cell types in the CNS, with the most prominent expression in glial cells. PAR1 activation enhances excitatory synaptic transmission secondary to th...
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