The role of the cerebellum in modulating nociceptive phenomena is unclear. In this study, we focus on the effects of cerebellar cortical stimulation on the responses of midline neurons of the lumbosacral spinal cord to graded nonnoxious and noxious visceral (colorectal distension) as well as somatic (brush, pressure, pinch) stimuli. Extracellular recording was used for the isolation and recordi...

Neurons of the cerebellar nuclei convey the final output of the cerebellum to their targets in various parts of the brain. Within the cerebellum their direct upstream connections originate from inhibitory Purkinje neurons. Purkinje neurons have a complex firing pattern of regular spikes interrupted by intermittent pauses of variable length. How can the cerebellar nucleus process this complex in...

Information processing of the cerebellar granular layer composed of granule and Golgi cells is regarded as an important first step toward the cerebellar computation. Our previous theoretical studies have shown that granule cells can exhibit random alternation between burst and silent modes, which provides a basis of population representation of the passage-of-time (POT) from the onset of extern...

Monoclonal antibodies were produced against phosphate-activated glutaminase (EC 3.5.1.2) as a marker for glutamatergic neurons: The enzyme was purified 1000-fold from rat brain mitochondria with a recovery of 27%. Upon SDS-PAGE the purified enzyme showed a single band up to 1.7 micrograms after the silver staining at molecular weight 62,000. Two monoclonal antibodies (IgMs) were produced; these...

To fully understand cell type identity and function in the nervous system there is a need to understand neuronal gene expression at the level of isoform diversity. Here we applied Next Generation Sequencing of the transcriptome (RNA-Seq) to purified sensory neurons and cerebellar granular neurons (CGNs) grown on an axonal growth permissive substrate. The goal of the analysis was to uncover neur...

The aim of the present paper is to efficiently describe the membrane potential dynamics of neural populations formed by species having a high density difference in specific brain areas. We propose a hybrid model whose main ingredients are a conductance-based model (ODE system) and its continuous counterpart (PDE system) obtained through a limit process in which the number of neurons confined in...

early life stress during fetal development has been hypothesized to predispose several neurological and psychiatric disorders in adulthood. the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of maternal stress on the volume of granular cells, total number of dark neurons and also the distribution of glycol-conjugates and changes of terminal sugars in the dentate gyrus. pregnant sprague-daw...

Fukuyama-type congenital muscular dystrophy (FCMD) results from a mutation in a gene on chromosome 9q31, fukutin, and is characterized pathologically by micropolygyria of the cerebral and cerebellar cortices. To elucidate the physiological function of fukutin as well as its pathological role in FCMD, we raised antisera against fukutin protein and observed its expression in developing human brai...

Six-day-old rats were treated intraperitoneal injections with methotrexate 1 mg/kg, and the cerebellum was examined. Both the length and width of the vermis decreased in the methotrexate-treated group instead of the control from 4 day after treatment (DAT) onward. A significant reduction in the width of the external granular layer was detected on 2 and 3 DAT in the methotrexate group. By 4 DAT,...

Foliation of the cerebella of Sprague-Dawley rats (strain Han:SPRD) is more advanced than in Wistar rats (strain Chbb:THOM). The differences expressed as length of the granular layer in median sections were significant in lobules VIa, VIII, IX and X. The length of the other vermian lobules is generally higher in the former strain. With regard to the volume of the granular layer, the situation i...