the effect of endogenous serotonin on long-term potentiation (ltp) in region cai was studied by blocking 5-ht2 receptors with ketanserin in rat hippocampal slices. such a block significantly en-hanced long-term potentiation of the cai population spike induced by high frequency stimulation of the schaffer collateral/ commissural pathway. this implies that serotonin acts on 5-ht2 receptors in cai...

early life events influence life-long patterns of emotionality and stress responsiveness and alter the rate of brain and body aging.  much research attention has focused on the programming effects of the hypothalamus pituitary axis (hpa) in early life and on understanding hpa function in response to stressors in adulthood. in comparison, there has been relatively little research on adolescence,...

P.L. Lions's work on the Schwarz alternating method for convex minimization problems is generalized to a certain non-smooth situation where the non-diierentiable part of the functionals is additive and independent with respect to the decomposition. Such functionals arise naturally in plasticity where the material law is a variational inequality formulated in L 2 ((). The application to plastici...

The analysis of stability and bifurcation is studied in nonlinear mechanics with dissipative mechanisms: plasticity, damage, fracture. The description is based on introduction of a set of internal variables. This framework allows a systematic description of the material behaviour via two potentials: the free energy and the potential of dissipation. In the framework of standard generalized mater...

Introduction: The prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), a cyclooxygenase (COX) product, play critical roles in the synaptic plasticity. Therefore, long term use of COX inhibitors may impair the synaptic plasticity. Considering the wide clinical administration of aspirin and its unknown effects on information processing in the brain, the effect of aspirin and sodium salicylate on the short term synaptic p...

Abstract* Introduction: Chronic morphine exposure can cause addiction and affect synaptic plasticity, but the underlying neural mechanisms of this phenomenon remain unknown. Herein we used electrophysiologic approaches in hippocampal CA1 area to examine the effect of chronic morphine administration on short-term plasticity. Methods: Experiments were carried out on hippocampal slices taken f...

In most mammalian species studied, two distinct and successive phases of sleep, slow wave (SW), and rapid eye movement (REM), can be recognized on the basis of their EEG profiles and associated behaviors. Both phases have been implicated in the offline sensorimotor processing of daytime events, but the molecular mechanisms remain elusive. We studied brain expression of the plasticity-associated...

In contrast to our increasingly detailed understanding of how synaptic plasticity provides a cellular substrate for learning and memory, it is less clear how a neuron's voltage-gated ion channels interact with plastic changes in synaptic strength to influence behavior. We find, using generalized and regional knockout mice, that deletion of the HCN1 channel causes profound motor learning and mem...

A significant contribution to the overall mechanical behaviour of microstructural materials is provided by the interaction of dislocation movement and grain boundaries. As a consequence, polycrystals are observed to respond with a higher strength for smaller grain sizes, a phenomenon which can not be modeled with classical single crystal plasticity theories. Gradient plasticity theories have be...

Mathematical analyses and computer simulations are used to study the adaptation induced by plasticity at inhibitory synapses in a cerebellum-like structure, the electrosensory lateral line lobe (ELL) of mormyrid electric fish. Single-cell model results are compared with results obtained at the system level in vivo. The model of system level adaptation uses detailed temporal learning rules of pl...