Recent technical advances have enabled the visualization of neuromelanin in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and locus ceruleus (LC) by 3-tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging in vivo. In the present study, we successfully detected neuromelanin in the SNc and LC of 6 healthy volunteers at 1.5T using a 3D gradient echo sequence with off-resonance magnetization transfer contrast.

In the spinal cord, the monoamine neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which is released mainly from fibers descending from the dorsal pons, has major modulatory effects on nociception and locomotor rhythms. To map the spatial and temporal patterns of this release, changes in monoamine level were examined in laminae I-VIII of lumbar segments L3-L6 of halothane-anesthetized rats during pontine stimu...

Bulbospinal noradrenergic pathways are shown to have an important role in descending inhibition of pain sensation. Locus ceruleus (LC), as a rich noradrenergic nucleus in the brain stem which has projections into the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, was evaluated for antinociceptive activity by using tonic and phasic pain models in the rat. LC-lesioned rats demonstrated moderate increase in ...

Novel stimuli reliably attract attention, suggesting that novelty may disrupt performance when it is task-irrelevant. However, under certain circumstances novel stimuli can also elicit a general alerting response having beneficial effects on performance. In a series of experiments we investigated whether different aspects of novelty--stimulus novelty, contextual novelty, surprise, deviance, and...