Background Ketamine rapidly elicits antidepressive effects in humans and mice in which serotonergic activity is involved. Although α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α4β2 nAChR) in the dorsal raphe nucleus plays a key role in the ketamine-induced prefrontal serotonin release, the source of cholinergic afferents, and its role is unclear. Methods Prefrontal serotonin levels after ketamine i...

Sir, We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the comment by Xiang et al. (2013) on our review on interspecies differences in the pedunculopontine nucleus area. As exemplified by the data of Xiang et al. (2013) it is evident that the mesencephalic locomotor region compromises several distinct structures that are involved in initiation and inhibition of gait, and certainly the implications of...

Sir, We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the comment by Xiang et al. (2013) on our review on interspecies differences in the pedunculopontine nucleus area. As exemplified by the data of Xiang et al. (2013) it is evident that the mesencephalic locomotor region compromises several distinct structures that are involved in initiation and inhibition of gait, and certainly the implications of...

Sir, We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the comment by Xiang et al. (2013) on our review on interspecies differences in the pedunculopontine nucleus area. As exemplified by the data of Xiang et al. (2013) it is evident that the mesencephalic locomotor region compromises several distinct structures that are involved in initiation and inhibition of gait, and certainly the implications of...

Understanding neuroanatomical sympathetic circuitry and neuronal connections from the caudal pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus to skeletal muscle is important to the study of possible mechanisms of pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) and cuneiform nucleus (CnF) that are involved in the regulation of skeletal muscle activity of the sympathetic pathway. The aim of this study was to use vir...

1 1 The pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus: a second cholinergic source for frequency-specific 2 auditory plasticity 3 Feng Luo, Xiuping Liu, Carol Wang and Jun Yan* 4 5 1. Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Faculty of 6 Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada 7 2. Health Science Centre, Hebei University, 342 Yuhua Eastern Road, Baoding, Hebe...

The mammalian mesopontine tegmentum (MPT) contains two cholinergic nuclei, the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) and the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus (LDTg). These provide the cholinergic innervation of, among other brain areas, the dopaminergic A9 and A10 cell groups. Their axons are thus the source of endogenous acetylcholine (ACh) acting on somato-dendritic acetylcholine receptors ...

We present data from animal studies showing that the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus-conserved through evolution, compartmentalized, and with a complex pattern of inputs and outputs-has functions that involve formation and updates of action-outcome associations, attention, and rapid decision making. This is in contrast to previous hypotheses about pedunculopontine function, which has served ...

Decisions are influenced by recent experience, but the neural basis for this phenomenon is not well understood. Here, we address this question in the context of action selection. We focused on activity in the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg), a mesencephalic region that provides input to several nuclei in the action selection network, in well-trained mice selecting actions based on sen...

The cholinergic neurons which originate in the mesopontine tegmentum and innervate the midbrain ventral tegmental area have been proposed to play a key role in intracranial self-stimulation reward. This mesopontine area also contains GABA neurons. Detailed information is still lacking, however, about the relationship of cholinergic and GABAergic neurons in this region to self-stimulation reward...