Introduction: Psychotropic drugs exert their effects, in part, by increasing neurotrophin levels in the brain. Nerve growth factor (NGF) protein levels after treatment with only a limited number of psychotropics have been determined. The present study was designed in order to evaluate the effects of acute and chronic administration of different psychotropic drugs on NGF protein levels in five b...

Five rats were trained to respond for 10% sucrose and 10% sucrose/0.006% quinine in an operant procedure. Both solutions were concurrently available on independent, variable-interval 5-s schedules of reinforcement. Rats reliably responded for both solutions throughout the sessions and made approximately 68% of their total daily responses for the sucrose solution. When injected prior to the sess...

Administration of benzodiazepines at appropriate times in the circadian cycle induce phase-shifts in circadian locomotor activity. The possibility that benzodiazepine-induced shifts are mediated at the level of the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), identified as the circadian pacemaker in mammals, was examined electrophysiologically. Extracellular recordings were made from Syrian hamster (Mesocrice...

The present research sought to test whether caffeine functioned as a Pavlovian cue in two ways--as a positive drug feature or as a conditional stimulus (CS). As a positive feature (Experiment 1), brief light presentations were followed by sucrose only on sessions in which caffeine (10 mg/kg) was administered. On intermixed saline sessions, light presentations were not followed by sucrose. The l...

A comparison of the anticonvulsant and neurotoxic effects of cannabidiol (CBD), delta 9tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabinol and antiepileptic drugs (phenytoin, phenobarbital, carbamazepine, chlordiazepoxide, clonazepam, ethosuximide and trimethadione) was made in rats. Median effective potencies (ED 50 values) for maximal electroshock, audiogenic seizures and TD50 values for a rotor rod neurotoxici...

A selective, sensitive and simple reversed-phase HPLC method for the determination of risperidone in bulk powder and pharmaceutical formulations was developed and validated. Risperidone can be separated on a Supelcosil LC8 DB column (250 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., 5 μm particle size) at 40°C with a mobile phase of methanol and 0.1 M ammonium acetate pH 5.50 (60:40, v/v), pumped at flow rate 1.0 mL min(-...

This study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of nitric oxide (NO) synthase inhibitors on benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome in mice and rats. Diazepam withdrawal in mice was read out as intensification of the seizures induced by a subthreshold dose of pentetrazole. In rats, the withdrawal syndrome resulting from chronic administration of diazepam, chlordiazepoxide, clonazepam and temazepam ...

Thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) is an important extracellular regulatory molecule that functions as a releasing factor in the anterior pituitary gland and as a neurotransmitter/neuromodulator in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Binding sites for TRH are present in these tissues, but the TRH receptor (TRH-R) has not been purified from any source. Using Xenopus laevis oocytes in an...

松 木 勝彦 ・岩本 多喜男 In the preceding paper, it was shown that the rat became tolerant to some psycho tropic drugs when blockage of the conditioned avoidance response was estimated as an index of tranquillizing activity (1). In the course of these studies, a statistically signi ficant difference was obtained between male and female rats in the development of tolerance upon the repeated administration...