The ancestral chordate neural tube had a tripartite structure, comprising anterior, midbrain-hindbrain boundary (MHB) and posterior regions. The most anterior region encompasses both forebrain and midbrain in vertebrates. It is not clear when or how the distinction between these two functionally and developmentally distinct regions arose in evolution. Recently, we reported a mouse PRD-class hom...

The vertebrate brain is regionalized during development into forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. Fibroblast growth factor 8 (FGF8) is expressed in the midbrain/hindbrain boundary (MHB) and functions as an organizer molecule. Previous studies demonstrated that the brain of basal chordates or ascidians is also regionalized at least into fore/midbrain and hindbrain. To better understand the ascidia...

Introduction and Aim: It has been proposed that µ-calpain is responsible for neuronal survival, while m-calpain – the degeneration. can be assumed "susceptibility" to damage factor neurons in different CNS regions depends on content/activity of calpain isoforms. We analyzed mRNA levels activity µ-and structures rats. Materials Methods: After decapitation intact male Wistar rats prefrontal corte...

Adherens junctions (AJs) play a role in mechanically connecting adjacent cells to maintain tissue structure, particularly in epithelial cells. The major cell-cell adhesion molecules at AJs are cadherins and nectins. Afadin binds to both nectins and α-catenin and recruits the cadherin-β-catenin complex to the nectin-based cell-cell adhesion site to form AJs. To explore the role of afadin in radi...

Neural stem cells (NSCs) constitute a promising source of cells for transplantation in Parkinson's disease (PD), but protocols for controlled dopaminergic differentiation are not yet available. Here we investigated the influence of oxygen on dopaminergic differentiation of human fetal NSCs derived from the midbrain and forebrain. Cells were differentiated for 10 days in vitro at low, physiologi...

Midbrain dopamine neuronal progenitors develop into heterogeneous subgroups of neurons, such as substantia nigra pars compacta, ventral tegmental area and retrorubal field, that regulate motor control, motivated and addictive behaviours. The development of midbrain dopamine neurons has been extensively studied, and these studies indicate that complex cross-regulatory interactions between extrin...

Brain nuclei are spatially organized collections of neurons that share functional properties. Despite being central to vertebrate brain circuitry, little is known about how nuclei are generated during development. We have chosen the chick midbrain oculomotor complex (OMC) as a model with which to study the developmental mechanisms of nucleogenesis. The chick OMC comprises two distinct cell grou...

Nuclei are fundamental units of vertebrate brain organization, but the mechanisms by which they are generated in development remain unclear. One possibility is that the early patterning of brain tissue into reiterated territories such as neuromeres and columns serves to allocate neurons to distinct nuclear fates. We tested this possibility in chick embryonic ventral midbrain, where a periodic p...

Recent data from animal studies raise the possibility that dopaminergic neuromodulation promotes the encoding of novel stimuli. We investigated a possible role for the dopaminergic midbrain in human episodic memory by measuring how polymorphisms in dopamine clearance pathways affect encoding-related brain activity (functional magnetic resonance imaging) in an episodic memory task. In 51 young, ...

Ap-2 transcription factors comprise a family of 5 closely related sequence-specific DNA binding proteins that play pivotal and non-redundant roles in embryonic organogenesis. To investigate the function of Ap-2δ, wδe analyzed its expression during embryogenesis and generated Ap-2δ-deficient mice. In line with the specific expression pattern of Ap-2δ in the mesencephalic tectum and the dorsal mi...