background and objective: evaluation of degenerative changes of motoneurons and their related synapses can be useful in understanding the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and their potential treatment. the present electron microscopic and immunohistochemical study investigates the axotomy-induced changes of adult spinal motoneurons up to 3 months following sciatic nerve transection. mat...

introduction: cholinergic systems are involved in learning and memory. scopolamine, a muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist, is used as a standard/ reference drug for inducing cognitive deficits in healthy humans and animals. the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of scopolamine on avoidance memory and number of neurons in rat’s hippocampus. . methods: thirty five male alb...

background: oleuropein is a phenolic compound which is present in the olive leaf extract. the purpose of the present study was to investigate the neuroprotective effect of oleuropein as an antioxidant agent on the substantia nigra in aged rats. methods: twenty 18-month-old wistar rats (450-550 g) were randomly divided into control and experimental groups. the experimental group received a daily...

background and objective: parkinson's disease (pd) is characterized by a progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra. in recent years, there have been interests in the role of the free radical damage in pd. cinnamon and its derivative, cinnamaldehyde acts as powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents. this research focused on the effects of cinnamon extract and cinn...

background: in vitro model studies are becoming increasingly popular for experimental research designs. they include isolation and expansion of cells of a particular tissue, such as the nervous tissue which contributes to understanding the underlying mechanisms in many pathologies. it enables  the scrutinization of intracellular signaling pathways responsible for cell death. objectives: in the ...

a new approach is introduced to estimate the formal information of neurons. formal information, mainly discusses about the aspects of the response that is related to the stimulus. estimation is based on introducing a mathematical nonlinear model with hammerstein-wiener system estimator. this method of system identification consists of three blocks to completely describe the nonlinearity of inpu...

the role of endogenous histamine and h1, h2 and h3 central receptors on food intake in broiler chickenswas investigated. for this purpose, a probe was used to manipulate the concentration of endogenoushistamine by intracerebroventricular (icv) injection of thioperamide, an h3 receptor antagonist, and r-α-methylhistamine, an h3 receptor agonist and subsequently the effects of brain histaminergic...

introduction mdma or ecstasy is a derivative of amphetamines used mostly by young people worldwide. although the acute effects of this drug are known, the effect of chronic administration is not well studied. therefor the aim of this study was to determine the effects of repeated (long term) administration of mdma on rats' memory and their hippocampal cell density. method: young adult male...

background: bone marrow stromal stem cells (bmsc) are appropriate source of multipotent stem cells that are ideally suited for use in various cell-based therapies. it can be differentiated into neuronal-like cells under appropriate conditions. this study examined the effectiveness of co-stimulation of creatine and retinoic acid in increasing the differentiation of bmsc into gabaergic neuron-lik...

it has been shown that the immunophilin ligands have the special advantage in spinal cord repair. in this study, the effects of cyclosporine a (csa) on functional recovery and histological outcome were evaluated following spinal cord injury in rats. after spinal cord hemisection in thirty six adult female sprague-dawley rats (200- 250 g), treatment groups received csa (2.5 mg/kg i.p.) at 15min ...