The first definitive studies of where afferents to cerebral cortex terminate were made possible by the finding that as they degenerate axon terminals become electron dense. Gold toning of Golgi impregnated neurons allowed the postsynaptic targets of these afferents to be identified by electron microscopy and also allowed the termination sites of axons from a variety of types of cortical neurons...

The zona incerta (ZI) is at the crossroad of almost all major ascending and descending fiber tracts and targets numerous brain centers from the thalamus to the spinal cord. Effective ascending drive of ZI cells has been described, but the role of descending cortical signals in patterning ZI activity is unknown. Cortical control over ZI function was examined during slow cortical waves (1-3 Hz), ...

Background: There is consistent evidence of the potential benefits lithium attenuating mechanisms neurodegeneration, including those related to pathophysiology Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and facilitating neurotrophic protective responses, maintenance telomere length. The aim was investigate effect pre-treatment with on amyloid-beta (Aβ)-induced toxicity length in neurons. Methods: Cortical neuro...

Evolutionary changes in the size of the cerebral cortex, a columnar structure, often occur through the addition or subtraction of columnar modules with the same number of neurons underneath a unit area of cortical surface. This view is based on the work of Rockel et al. [Rockel AJ, Hiorns RW, Powell TP (1980) The basic uniformity in structure of the neocortex. Brain 103:221-244], who found a st...

Understanding the basis of brain function requires knowledge of cortical operations over wide-spatial scales, but also within the context of single neurons. In vivo, wide-field GCaMP imaging and sub-cortical/cortical cellular electrophysiology were used in mice to investigate relationships between spontaneous single neuron spiking and mesoscopic cortical activity. We make use of a rich set of c...

a b s t r a c t introduction: even today there is no effective drug therapy to prevent neuronal loss after brain stroke. in the present study we studied the effect of mitochondrial katp channel regulators on neuronal ultrastructure after ischemia reperfusion in the rat. materials & methods: rats temporarily subjected to four vessels occlusion for 15 minutes followed by 24 hours reperfusion with...

Background: Ketamine is a commonly used intravenous anesthetic which produces dissociation anesthesia, analgesia, and amnesia. The mechanism of ketamine-induced synaptic inhibition in high-level cortical areas is still unknown. We aimed to elucidate the effects of different concentrations of ketamine on the glutamatergic synaptic transmission of the neurons in the primary somatosensory cortex b...

The olfactory cortex receives converging axonal inputs from many mitral and tufted cells in the olfactory bulb. Recent studies indicate that single cortical neurons integrate signals from diverse odorants. However, there remains a basic question, namely, the signals from which kinds of odorants are integrated by the individual cortical neurons? The present study examined the possibility that so...

Here, we show that the p53 family member, p73, is necessary for survival and long-term maintenance of CNS neurons, including postnatal cortical neurons. In p73-/- animals, cortical neuron number is normal at birth but decreases significantly by postnatal day 14 (P14)-P16 because of enhanced apoptosis. This decrease continues into adulthood, when p73-/- animals have approximately one-half as man...

Glutamatergic neurotransmission plays important roles in sensory map formation. The absence of the group I metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) leads to abnormal sensory map formation throughout the mouse somatosensory pathway. To examine the role of cortical mGluR5 expression on barrel map formation, we generated cortex-specific mGluR5 knock-out (KO) mice. Eliminating mGluR5 function sol...