Substantia nigra is an important neuronal structure, located in the ventral midbrain, that exerts a regulatory function within the basal ganglia circuitry through the nigro-striatal pathway. Although its subcortical connections are relatively well-known in human brain, little is known about its cortical connections. The existence of a direct cortico-nigral pathway has been demonstrated in roden...

Gait and balance disturbances typically emerge in advanced Parkinson's disease with generally limited response to dopaminergic medication and subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation. Therefore, advanced programming with interleaved pulses was put forward to introduce concomittant nigral stimulation on caudal contacts of a subthalamic lead. Here, we hypothesized that the combined stimulation ...

Copyright: @ 2015 Dr. Alexander K.C. Leung. This is an Open Access article published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received Date: 24th May 2015 Accepted Date: 23rd June 2015 Published Date: 26th June 2015 Research Artic...

Introduction Sambucus nigra, or European elder, is a tall tree-like shrub, native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and naturalized in the United States. Various parts of the elder have long been used in traditional medicine as a diaphoretic, diuretic, astringent, laxative, and emetic. The berries were used traditionally as a food to make elderberry wine and pies, and as a flavoring or dye. Cu...

A 38 year old patient with megalencephaly, mental retardation, and lifelong tremor developed levodopa responsive parkinsonism in his mid-30s followed by the appearance of dyskinesiae, motor fluctuations, hallucinations, and dementia. Brain MRI showed, as well as other changes, iron deposition in the globus pallidus, substantia nigra, and the pulvinar of the thalamus. Postmortem examination disc...

A recent report by Zhao et al. [Zhao, M., Momma, S., Delfani, K., Carlen, M., Cassidy, R. M., Johansson, C. B., Brismar, H., Shupliakov, O., Frisen, J. & Janson, A. M. (2003) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 7925-7930] suggests that dopaminergic neurons, the cell type lost in Parkinson's disease, are continuously generated in the adult substantia nigra pars compacta. Using similar methodological...

Background: Skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer and one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Marin animals have attracted much attention in recent years as useful substances having application in medicine. It was shown that Phallusia nigra (P. nigra) known as sea squirt could play an important role in cancer therapy. Methods: This study was designed to figure out the probable select...

Gene delivery using adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors is a widely used method to transduce neurons in the brain, especially due to its safety, efficacy, and long-lasting expression. In addition, by varying AAV serotype, promotor, and titer, it is possible to affect the cell specificity of expression or the expression levels of the protein of interest. Dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra...

background and objective: parkinson’s disease (pd) is a rather common neurological disorder in elders that is due to degeneration of dopaminergic neurons within mesencephalic substantia nigra pars compacta. with regard to protective and antioxidant effect of simvastatin, this study was conducted to evaluate its neuroprotective effect in an experimental model of pd. materials and methods: in thi...