Whereas hemispheric dominance is well-established for appendicular motor control in humans, the evidence for dominance in axial motor control is still scarce. In Parkinson's disease (PD), unilateral (UL) onset of appendicular motor symptoms corresponds with asymmetric neurodegeneration predominantly affecting contralateral nigrostriatal circuits. Disease progression yields bilateral and axial m...

BACKGROUND The relationship between monosymptomatic resting tremor (mRT) and Parkinson's disease (PD) remains controversial. In this study, we aimed to assess the function of presynaptic dopaminergic neurons in patients with mRT by dopamine transporter positron emission tomography (DAT-PET) and to evaluate the utility of clinical features or electrophysiological studies in differential diagnosi...

BACKGROUND Dopamine (DA) has long been known to have modulatory effects on vertebrate motor circuits. However, the types of information encoded by supraspinal DAergic neurons and their relationship to motor behavior remain unknown. RESULTS By conducting electrophysiological recordings from awake, paralyzed zebrafish larvae that can produce behaviorally relevant activity patterns, we show that...

Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in central nervous system and, as such, many brain regions, including basal ganglia, are rich glutamatergic neurons. The importance of ganglia control voluntary movement has long been recognised, with effect dysfunction region exemplified by motor symptoms seen Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, and associated also play a role modulation emotio...

L-DOPA is the primary drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD) symptoms, but motor side effects limit its long term use. Previous experimental studies show that L-DOPA acts on supersensitive D1 receptors in the basal ganglia to induce extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2), a pair of MAP-kinase proteins that may be involved in induction of motor side effects. Since GABA is k...

Background Endometriosis is a common gynecological disease, can cause severe pelvic pain. Studies demonstrated the presence of sensory nerve fibers in endometrium of endometriosis patient. Nevertheless, no information is available on mechanisms of sensory nerve formation in eutopic or ectopic lesions. Since HOX genes have important roles in both reproductive tract and nerve growth, we decided t...

Abstract Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in midbrain, and stem cell transplantation method provides a promising strategy for treatment. In these studies, tracking biological behaviors transplanted cells vivo essential basic understanding function evaluation clinical effectiveness. present study, we developed novel ultrasmall superparamag...

Dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra (SN) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are collectively implicated in motor- and reward-related behaviors. However, dopaminergic SN and VTA neurons differ on several functional levels, and dopaminergic SN neurons themselves vary in their intrinsic electrical properties, neurochemical characteristics and connections. This heterogeneity is not only impo...

Studies of Parkinson's disease (PD) have been hindered by lack of access to affected human dopaminergic (DA) neurons. Here, we report generation of induced pluripotent stem cells that carry the p.G2019S mutation (G2019S-iPSCs) in the Leucine-Rich Repeat Kinase-2 (LRRK2) gene, the most common PD-related mutation, and their differentiation into DA neurons. The high penetrance of the LRRK2 mutatio...

Parkinson disease (PD) is the most common movement disorder with progressive degeneration of midbrain dopaminergic neurons for which current treatments afford symptomatic relief with no-prevention of disease progression. Due to the neuroprotective property of the Nigella sativa bioactive compound thymoquinone (TQ), this study was undertaken to evaluate whether TQ could improve behavioral and ce...