Recently, there has been great interest in developing finely pixellated position-sensitive scintillation detectors for ultra-high-resolution Positron Emission Tomography (PET) systems designed for breast cancer detection, diagnosis, and staging and for imaging small laboratory animals. We are developing a different high-resolution PET detector design that promotes nearly complete scintillation ...

Principal neurons of the lateral superior olivary nucleus (LSO) respond selectively to interaural level differences (ILD). To perform this computation, LSO neurons integrate excitatory synaptic drive from the ipsilateral ear with inhibitory synaptic drive from the contralateral ear via the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB). Previous research demonstrated that inhibitory terminals from...

The lateral superior olive (LSO), a conspicuous mammalian brainstem nucleus that is involved in sound localization, has become a model system for investigating the formation of topographically organized inhibitory and excitatory connections. In experiments employing intracellular injections of Lucifer yellow or neurobiotin into lightly fixed brain slices, we have examined the soma-dendritic mor...

Neuronal circuit plasticity during development is fundamental for precise network formation. Pioneering studies of the developmental visual cortex indicated that noradrenaline (NA) is crucial for ocular dominance plasticity during the critical period in the visual cortex. Recent research demonstrated tonotopic map formation by NA during the critical period in the auditory system, indicating tha...

Positron emission tomography (PET) scanners designed to image animals the size of rats and mice should possess simultaneously high and uniform spatial resolution and high sensitivity. ATLAS (Advanced Technology Laboratory Animal Scanner), a 6.0 cm diameter effective transverse field-of-view (FOV), 2 cm axial FOV ring-type research scanner seeks these goals by surrounding the animal with eightee...

Human listeners are sensitive to interaural time differences (ITDs) in the envelopes of sounds, which can serve as a cue for sound localization. Many high-frequency neurons in the mammalian inferior colliculus (IC) are sensitive to envelope-ITDs of sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (SAM) sounds. Typically, envelope-ITD-sensitive IC neurons exhibit either peak-type sensitivity, discharging maxima...

We have developed a compact retinal imager that integrates adaptive optics (AO) into a line scanning ophthalmoscope (LSO). The bench-top AO-LSO instrument significantly reduces the size, complexity, and cost of research AO scanning laser ophthalmoscopes (AOSLOs), for the purpose of moving adaptive optics imaging more rapidly into routine clinical use. The AO-LSO produces high resolution retinal...

Background: Health status of offspring is programmed by maternal diet throughout gestation and lactation. The present study investigates the lasting effects of maternal supplementation with different amounts of soy oil or extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) on weight and biochemical parameters during gestation and lactation of female mice offspring.Methods: Eight weeks old female C57BL/6 mice (n=40) ...

The medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) is a key nucleus in high-fidelity temporal processing that underlies sound localization in the auditory brainstem. While the glycinergic principal cells of the MNTB project to all primary nuclei of the superior olive, during development the projection from MNTB to the lateral superior olive (LSO) is of interest because this immature inhibitory pro...

The inferior colliculus (IC) is a midbrain nucleus that exhibits sensitivity to differences in interaural time and intensity (ITDs and IIDs) and integrates information from the auditory brainstem to provide an unambiguous representation of sound location across the azimuth. Further upstream, in the lateral superior olive (LSO), absence of low-threshold potassium currents in Kcna1(-/-) mice inte...