DESPITE the high incidence of convulsive disorders and widespread use of shock therapy in the major psychoses, relatively few investigations have dealt with the physiological properties of experimental seizures (1, 2, 3, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17). Convulsive threshold has received considerable attention, particularly in the testing of anticonvulsant drugs (11, 13, 15, 18, 21, and others), but thresho...

Objective: Newbouldia laevis Seem, is an ubiquitous perennial plant belonging to the family Bignoniaceae with varying applicability in ethnomedicine. Methods: The anticonvulsant effect of the aqueous extracts of root and stem bark preparations was undertaken using standard techniques. Results: Results showed that the LD50 in mice was 489.8mg/kg body weight while 5.6mg/kg bod...

Objective: Newbouldia laevis Seem, is an ubiquitous perennial plant belonging to the family Bignoniaceae with varying applicability in ethnomedicine. Methods: The anticonvulsant effect of the aqueous extracts of root and stem bark preparations was undertaken using standard techniques. Results: Results showed that the LD50 in mice was 489.8mg/kg body weight while 5.6mg/kg bod...

A series of p-nitrophenyl substituted semicarbazones (4a-c) and phenoxy/p-bromophenoxy acetyl hydrazones (8a-q) were synthesized and their anticonvulsant activity was screened against maximal electroshock seizure (MES), subcutaneous metrazole (ScMet) and subcutaneous strychnine (ScSty) tests. Compounds 4a-c with -NHCO- were found to be the most active in all these tests. These compounds were al...

Migration disorders cause neurons to differentiate in an abnormal heterotopic position. Although significant insights have been gained into the etiology of these disorders, very little is known about the anatomy of heterotopias. We have studied heterotopic masses arising in the hippocampal CA1 region after prenatal treatment with methylazoxymethanol (MAM) in rats. Heterotopic cells were phenoty...

Contemporary interest in resuscitation was historically related to anesthetic death. Primitive techniques of anesthetic administration, loss of airway control, and psychologically influenced sudden death contributed to unanticipated respiratory and cardiac arrest. Airway obstruction has remained the principal factor in asphyxial death, necessitating crucial preservation of respiratory function ...

Objectives: The discovery of cortical spreading depression 80 years ago by Leão was intimately connected to epilepsy research. In our studies we found that monitoring brain hemodynamics, metabolic ionic and electrical activities are very similar in the two pathophysiological events. Here presenting coupling between while mitochondrial nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide-NADH together with other p...

American psychiatry on the eve of Pearl Harbor was a small, stigmatised, and isolated specialty, for the most part confined as surely inside the high walls of its barrack-asylums as the patients over whom it exercised near-autocratic powers. The number of mentally ill patients incarcerated in state and county mental hospitals had grown sharply, from 150,000 at the turn of the century to 445,000...

Synaptotagmins are a family of proteins that function in membrane fusion events, including synaptic vesicle exocytosis. Within this family, synaptotagmin IV (Syt IV) is unique in being a depolarization-induced immediate early gene (IEG). Experimental perturbation of Syt IV modulates neurotransmitter release in mice, flies, and PC12 cells, and modulates learning in mice. Despite these features, ...

Electro-convulsive therapy was first used extensively in 1939, and with such success that three years later Kolb and Vogel (1942) in a survey ofthe United States reported its use in 42 per cent of mental hospitals and in the treatment of 2-3 per cent of all mental hospital patients; this latter group was comprised of the schizophrenias, the manic-depressive states, involutional melancholias, an...