We have elucidated some of the mechanisms by which ethanol (EtOH) reduces synaptic efficacy at model glutamatergic synapses. The crayfish phasic and tonic neuromuscular junctions are superb models for directly assessing the effects of EtOH on pre-synaptic components of synaptic transmission. The ability to perform quantal analysis of synaptic transmission has allowed us to assess pre-synaptic a...

The most pronounced effect of norepinephrine (NE) in the olfactory bulb is disinhibition of mitral/tufted (M/T) cells. Although it has been previously proposed that the effects of NE are mediated by a direct inhibitory action on granule cells, we have demonstrated that NE could exert it effects through inhibition of excitatory synaptic transmission from M/T cells to granule cells (Trombley and ...

introduction: the magnocellular neurons (mcns) of the supraoptic nucleus (son) play a crucial role in control of physiological and pathophysiologiccal condition due to two peptides that they synthesize, i.e. oxytocin (oxt) and vasopressin (avp). the activity of mcns is regulated by a variety of excitatory and inhibitory inputs. opioid receptors are one of the important receptors in son synapses...

The activation of autoreceptors is known to be important in the modulation of presynaptic transmitter secretion in peripheral and central neurons. Using whole-cell recordings made from the free growth cone of myocyte-contact motoneurons of Xenopus cell cultures, we have observed spontaneous nerve terminal currents (NTCs). These spontaneous NTCs are blocked by d-tubocurarine (d-TC) and alpha-bun...

Mutations in the cathepsin D (CTSD) gene cause an aggressive neurodegenerative disease (congenital neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis) that leads to early death. Recent evidence suggests that presynaptic abnormalities play a major role in the pathogenesis of CTSD deficiencies. To identify the early events that lead to synaptic alterations, we investigated synaptic ultrastructure and function in pre...

18 In vitro and in vivo traumatic brain injury (TBI) alter the function and expression of glutamate 19 receptors, yet the combined effect of these alterations on cortical excitatory synaptic 20 transmission is unclear. We examined the effect of in vitro mechanical injury on excitatory 21 synaptic function in cultured cortical neurons by assaying synaptically-driven [Ca]i oscillations 22 in smal...

The cortical local field potential (LFP) is a common measure of population activity, but its relationship to synaptic activity in individual neurons is not fully established. This relationship has been typically studied during anesthesia and is obscured by shared slow fluctuations. Here, we used patch-clamp recordings in visual cortex of anesthetized and awake mice to measure intracellular acti...

Spike-based learningwithmemristive devices in neuromorphic computing architectures typically uses learning circuits that require overlapping pulses frompreand post-synaptic nodes. This imposes severe constraints on the length of the pulses transmitted in the network, and on the network’s throughput. Furthermore,most of these circuits do not decouple the currentsflowing through memristive device...

Understanding the neurophysiology of fear extinction has important implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders. Here we report that fear conditioning resulted in an increase in AMPA/NMDA ratio as well as depression of paired-pulse facilitation (PPF) in neurons of the lateral nucleus of amygdala. These conditioning-induced changes in synaptic transmission were not affected ...

Pyramidal neurons in hippocampal CA1 regions are highly sensitive to cerebral ischemia. Alterations of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission may contribute to the ischemia-induced neuronal degeneration. However, little is known about the changes of GABAergic synaptic transmission in the hippocampus following reperfusion. We examined the GABA(A) receptor-mediated inhibitory postsynapti...