BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Dysfunction of DA neurotransmission from the SN and VTA has been implicated in neuropsychiatric diseases, including Parkinson disease and schizophrenia. Unfortunately, these midbrain DA structures are difficult to define on clinical MR imaging. To more precisely evaluate the anatomic architecture of the DA midbrain, we scanned healthy participants with a 7T MR imaging sys...

Two patients with oculomotor palsy caused by midbrain infarction are reported. In the first, pupillary reaction was affected and in the second this reaction was spared. Because the lesions in the anterior part of the tegmentum were in the upper midbrain in the first patient and in the lower midbrain in the second, it is suggested that the pupillary components of the oculomotor nerve are located...

Degeneration of dopamine neurons in the midbrain causes symptoms of the movement disorder, Parkinson disease. Dopamine neurons are generated from proliferating progenitor cells localized in the embryonic ventral midbrain. However, it remains unclear for how long cells with dopamine progenitor character are retained and if there is any potential for reactivation of such cells after cessation of ...

Midbrain GABAergic neurons control several aspects of behavior, but regulation of their development and diversity is poorly understood. Here, we further refine the midbrain regions active in GABAergic neurogenesis and show their correlation with the expression of the transcription factor Gata2. Using tissue-specific inactivation and ectopic expression, we show that Gata2 regulates GABAergic neu...

Dopaminergic neurons located in the ventral midbrain control movement, emotional behavior, and reward mechanisms. The dysfunction of ventral midbrain dopaminergic neurons is implicated in Parkinson's disease, Schizophrenia, depression, and dementia. Thus, studying the regulation of midbrain dopaminergic neuron differentiation could not only provide important insight into mechanisms regulating m...

The transcription factor Otx2 is required to determine mesencephalic versus metencephalic (cerebellum/pons) territory during embryogenesis. This function of Otx2 primarily involves positioning and maintaining the mid-hindbrain organizer at the border between midbrain and anterior hindbrain. Otx2 expression is maintained long after this organizer is established. We therefore generated conditiona...

Midbrain dopaminergic neurons are highly heterogeneous. They differ in their connectivity and firing patterns and, therefore, in their functional properties. The molecular underpinnings of this heterogeneity are largely unknown, and there is a paucity of markers that distinguish these functional subsets. In this paper, we report the identification and characterization of a novel subset of midbr...

The mouse midbrain-hindbrain constriction is centrally involved in patterning of the midbrain and anterior hindbrain (cerebellum), as revealed by recent genetic studies using mice and embryological studies in chick (reviewed in [1,2]). This region can act as an organizer region to induce midbrain and cerebellar development. Genes such as Engrailed-1, Pax-2 and Pax-5, which are expressed in the ...

The floor plate (FP), a signaling center and a structure rich in radial glia-like cells, has been traditionally thought to be devoid of neurons and neuronal progenitors. However, in the midbrain, the FP contains neurons of the dopaminergic (DA) lineage that require contact with radial glia-like cells for their induction. We, therefore, decided to explore the interaction relationship between rad...