The excitability of relay neurons in the dorsal geniculate nucleus (dLGN) can be altered by a variety of neuromodulators. The dLGN receives substantial dopaminergic input from the brain stem, and this innervation may play a crucial role in the gating of visual information from the retina to visual neocortex. In this study, we investigated the action of dopamine on identified dLGN neurons using ...

Most central neurons package and release a single transmitter. However co-transmission of fast-acting and modulatory transmitters has been observed in vertebrate and invertebrate systems. Here we describe a population of periglomerular cells in mouse brain slices (PND14-21) that co-release dopamine and GABA. We made whole cell recordings from periglomerular cells that expressed enhanced green f...

Renal sodium handling is important for regulating BP, and renal dopamine and adenosine play an important role in renal sodium handling, however the interaction of these hormones in the kidney was not clarified. In in vivo experiments, adenosine significantly increased water and sodium excretion by 50% compared with vehicle when infused into the left renal artery, accompanied by an increase in u...

Much evidence suggests that the neuropeptide cholecystokinin (CCK) functions as a neurotransmitter or neuromodulator in the central nervous system. The CCKa receptor subtype in the nucleus accumbens has been demonstrated to potentiate the behavioral and neurophysiological effects of dopamine. Since the mesolimbic dopamine system participates in the regulation of male rat sexual behavior, the pr...

Antipsychotic drugs produce unpleasant subjective experiences, which have been associated with high levels of dopamine D2 receptor occupancy. Aripiprazole is a partial agonist antipsychotic, which is hypothesized to produce a different subjective experience profile compared to standard D2 antagonist antipsychotics. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of D2 occupancy produced by a pa...

Electroacupuncture (EA) has been used to suppress heroin craving in addicts and the conditioned place preference (CPP) for morphine in the rat. The question remained whether EA by itself will produce some rewarding effect. This was investigated using the CPP procedure in the present study. The results indicated that rats showed a significant preference to the 2 Hz EA-paired compartment. This re...

Pavlovian stimuli previously paired with food can markedly elevate the rate of food-reinforced instrumental responding. This effect, termed Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT), depends both on general activating and specific cueing properties of Pavlovian stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that the general activating properties of Pavlovian stimuli are mediated by mesoaccumbens dopamine system...

Tetrahydroprotoberberines (THPBs) are isoquinoline alkaloids isolated from the Chinese herb Corydalis yanhusuo. In the present study, we performed competitive binding assays to examine the binding of l-THBr to neurotransmitter receptors known to be involved in sedation, hypnosis and anxiety. Our results show that l-THBr does not interact with GABAergic receptors but has binding affinities for d...

Co-administration of caffeine profoundly enhances the acute toxicity of 3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in rats. The aim of this study was to determine the ability of caffeine to impact upon MDMA-induced dopamine release in superfused brain tissue slices as a contributing factor to this drug interaction. MDMA (100 and 300μM) induced a dose-dependent increase in dopamine release in stri...

The transmitter glutamate is thought to be used by all vertebrate photoreceptors to drive the second-order neurons of the retina, horizontal and bipolar neurons. Dopamine, an endogenous retinal neurotransmitter localized to amacrine and interplexiform cells, has previously been shown to enhance glutamate-gated currents in retinal horizontal cells. In the present study we demonstrate that bipola...