The rat vas deferens was removed and either transplanted alongside the soleus muscle or into the bed of the soleus muscle that had previously been removed, and in this case the soleus nerve was connected to the transplant. The vas deferens reinnervated by the somatomotor nerve recovered the best. Contractions to transmural electrical stimulation could not be elicited from the denervated vas def...

BACKGROUND Cholinergic regulation of chronotropic (frequency) and inotropic (force) aspects of antral contractility and how these impact on gastric emptying are not well delineated. AIMS To determine the effects of cholinergic stimulation and inhibition on myoelectric, contractile, and emptying parameters of gastric motility. METHODS Ten normal subjects underwent three studies each, using s...

bstract—By its projections to the primary visual and the refrontal cortices, the basal forebrain cholinergic system is nvolved in cognitive processing of sensory stimuli. It has een suggested that visual stimulus-induced cholinergic acivation of the visual cortex may exert a permissive role on halamocortical inputs. However, it is not known if visual timulation elicits cholinergic activation of...

Electrical stimulation of the horizontal limb of the diagonal band of Broca (HDB) was coupled with recording of evoked potentials in the piriform cortex. Stimulation of the HDB caused an enhancement of the late, disynaptic component of the evoked potential elicited by stimulation of the lateral olfactory tract but caused a suppression of the synaptic potential elicited by stimulation of the pos...

Increased smooth muscle tone in the human prostate contributes to the symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia. In the mouse prostate gland, cholinergic innervation is responsible for a component of the nerve-mediated contractile response. This study investigates the muscarinic receptor subtype responsible for the cholinergic contractile response in the mouse prostate gland. To cha...

Acetylcholine profoundly affects neocortical function, being involved in arousal, attention, learning, memory, sensory and motor function, and plasticity. The majority of cholinergic afferents to neocortex are from neurons in nucleus basalis. Nucleus basalis also contains projecting neurons that release other transmitters, including GABA and possibly glutamate. Hence, electrical stimulation of ...

To maintain horizontal eye position on a visual target after a saccade, extraocular motoneurons need a persistent (tonic) neural activity, called "eye-position signal," generated by prepositus hypoglossi (PH) neurons. We have shown previously in vitro and in vivo that this neural activity depends, among others mechanisms, on the interplay of glutamatergic transmission and cholinergic synaptical...

The cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway is a mechanism whereby local inflammation is modulated by the brain via the vagus nerve and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). The nAChR family are ligand-gated ion channels that consist of many different subtypes formed by the specific assembly of five polypeptide subunits including alpha1-10, beta1-4, gamma, delta, and epsilon. The alpha7 rec...

Background—Cholinergic regulation of chronotropic (frequency) and inotropic (force) aspects of antral contractility and how these impact on gastric emptying are not well delineated. Aims—To determine the eVects of cholinergic stimulation and inhibition on myoelectric, contractile, and emptying parameters of gastric motility. Methods—Ten normal subjects underwent three studies each, using simult...

BACKGROUND We have proposed that nerve injury-specific loss of spinal tonic cholinergic inhibition may play a role in the analgesic effects of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonists on neuropathic pain. However, the tonic cholinergic inhibition of pain remains to be well characterized. RESULTS Here, we show that choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) signals were localized not only in ou...