Understanding the effects of tobacco smoking on neuroadaptations in GABAA receptor levels over alcohol withdrawal will provide critical insights for the treatment of comorbid alcohol and nicotine dependence. We conducted parallel studies in human subjects and nonhuman primates to investigate the differential effects of tobacco smoking and nicotine on changes in GABAA receptor availability durin...

introduction: the bed nucleus stria terminalis (bst) is a part of the limbic system. it was recently shown that chemical stimulation of the bst by l-glutamate elicited cardiovascular depressive responses. in the present study, we have investigated the possible cardiovascular role of the gabaergic receptors in bst by microinjection of its agonist and antagonists. methods: experiments were perfor...

Lines of evidence coming from many branches of neuroscience indicate that anxiety disorders arise from a dysfunction in the modulation of brain circuits which regulate emotional responses to potentially threatening stimuli. The concept of anxiety disorders as a disturbance of emotional response regulation is a useful one as it allows anxiety to be explained in terms of a more general model of a...

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) associated with hippocampal sclerosis (HS) is a form of focal epilepsy, which is particularly resistant to medical treatment. It is, however, established that patients with TLE and HS respond favorably to surgery. Accumulating evidence indicates that TLE is associated with impairment in synaptic signaling via GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid), the main inhibitory neurotran...

The effects of a single convulsive dose of pentylenetetrazol (PTZ, 45 mg/kg i.p.) on rat brain gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptors were studied. Selected GABAA receptor subunit mRNAs were measured by Northern blot analysis (with beta-actin mRNA as a standard). Four hours after PTZ, the GABAA receptor gamma2-mRNA was decreased in hippocampus, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum; alpha1-...

GABA receptors of bipolar cells from the skate retina: actions of zinc on GABA-mediated membrane currents. J. Neurophysiol. 78: 2402-2412, 1997. gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA)-induced currents were recorded from isolated bipolar cells of the skate retina using perforated patch-clamp methodology. Pharmacological analysis of the responses, using selective agonists and antagonists of the major cla...

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) depolarizes dorsal root ganglia (DRG) primary afferent neurons through activation of Cl- permeable GABAA receptors but the physiologic role of GABAA receptors in the peripheral terminals of DRG neurons remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of peripheral GABAA receptors in nociception using a mouse model of acute inflammation. In vivo, peripheral...

Wu J, Chang Y, Li G, Xue F, DeChon J, Ellsworth K, Liu Q, Yang K, Bahadroani N, Zheng C, Zhang J, Rekate H, Rho JM, Kerrigan JF. Electrophysiological properties and subunit composition of GABAA receptors in patients with gelastic seizures and hypothalamic hamartoma. J Neurophysiol 98: 5–15, 2007. First published April 11, 2007; doi:10.1152/jn.00165.2007. Abnormalities in GABAA receptor structur...

Background: The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is well known for its role in cardiovascular control. It is demonstrated that about 20-30% of the VTA neurons are GABAergic though their role in cardiovascular control is not yet understood. This study is carried out to find the effects of GABA A and GABA B receptors on cardiovascular response of the VTA. Methods: Experiments were performed on uretha...

–The GABAA receptor is a ligand-operated chloride channel. It has a pentameric structure. In mammalian brain different subunits are recruited from four gene subfamilies. Using immunocytochemistry, we investigated the distribution of the 13 GABAA receptor subunits in the hippocampus of the rat. GABAA receptor subunits were heterogeneously distributed within different hippocampal subfields. High ...