Neuroscience

Stroke is the most common cause of disability. Brain repair mechanisms are often insufficient to allow a full recovery. Stroke damage involve all brain cell type and extracellular matrix which represent the crucial "glio-neurovascular niche" useful for brain plasticity. Regenerative medicine including cell therapies hold great promise to decrease post-stroke disability of many patients, by promoting both neuroprotection and neural repair through direct effects on brain lesion and/or systemic effects such as immunomodulation...

Despite the recommendation of improving assessment objectivity and frequency, the use of immersive virtual reality to measure and quantify movement quality remains underexplored. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the reliability, validity and usability of an immersive virtual reality application, KinematicsVR, to assess upper limb kinematics among older adults with and without major neurocognitive disorder. The KinematicsVR involves the drawing of three-dimensional straight lines, circles and squares using a controller in a virtual environment...

The main clinical manifestation of Alzheimer's disease is progressive cognitive decline, and its pathological features are β-amyloid (Aβ) deposition, neurofibrillary tangles, synaptic dysfunction and neuron death. Neuroinflammation is an important reason for the occurrence and development of AD, which is mainly manifested by the accumulation of activated microglia and reactive astrocytes. Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) is one of the most important apolipoprotein in the brain, which is related to metabolism, aggregation and toxicity of Aβ...

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a severe disease with high mortality. Recently, the role of BCL-3 in ICH has started to gain attention, but its mechanism remains unclear. A collagenase injection method was used to establish an ICH model in rats, and the expression of BCL-3 were detected. Rat brain microvascular endothelial cells (rBMECs) were isolated and induced with Hemin to establish an in vitro ICH model. The expression of BCL-3 was assessed, followed by detection of cell apoptosis. In the cell model, the recruitment, polarization, and pro-inflammatory features of the microglia (MGs) were assessed after co-cultured with rBMECs...

The endocannabinoid (eCB) system plays an important role in regulating the stress response, including glucocorticoid release and the generation of avoidance behaviour. Its two major ligands, 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG) and N-arachidonoylethanolamine (anandamide; AEA), are dynamically influenced by psychological stress to gate the generation of the stress response and facilitate recovery upon stress termination. Many biological systems exhibit circadian "daily" rhythms, including glucocorticoids and endocannabinoids, and the behavioural and endocrine impact of stress is modulated by the time of day...

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is more frequently diagnosed in men. Nevertheless, through current diagnostic tools, women have also been found to be affected by this disorder, but in different ways. Few studies have been conducted regarding unique periods of life, such as motherhood. Yet, extant literature has already described the existence of a comorbidity between autism and postpartum depression. Thus, this study aimed to compare the maternal care sphere between two animal models of these diseases...

Mitochondrial oxidative stress is one of the characteristics of secondary brain injury (SBI) after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), contributing largely to the apoptosis of neurons. Celastrol, a quinone methide triterpene that possesses antioxidant and mitochondrial protective properties, has emerged as a neuroprotective agent. However, the activity of celastrol has not been tested in ICH-induced SBI. In this study, we found that celastrol could effectively alleviate neurological function deficits and reduce brain oedema and neuronal apoptosis caused by ICH...

Emerging evidence indicates that aberrations in sensorimotor cortical oscillations likely play a key role in uncharacteristic motor actions seen in cerebral palsy. This interpretation is largely centered on the assumption that the aberrant cortical oscillations primarily reflect the motor aspects, with less consideration of possible higher-order cognitive connections. To directly probe this view, we examined the impact of cognitive interference on the sensorimotor cortical oscillations seen in persons with cerebral palsy using magnetoencephalography...

OBJECTIVE: GluA1-containing α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors (AMPARs) inserted into postsynaptic membranes are key to the process of long-term potentiation (LTP). Some evidence has shown that 4.1N plays a critical role in the membrane trafficking of AMPARs. However, the underlying mechanism behind this is still unclear. We investigated the role of 4.1N-mediated membrane trafficking of AMPARs during theta-burst stimulation long-term potentiation (TBS-LTP), to illustrate the molecular mechanism behind LTP...

The vast majority of stroke cases are classified as ischemic stroke, but effective pharmacotherapy strategies to treat brain infarction are still limited. Glutamate, which is a primary mediator of excitotoxicity, contributes to neuronal damage in numerous pathologies, including ischemia. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the hydrogen sulfide donor AP39 on excitotoxicity. AP39 was administered as a single dose of 100 nmol/kg b.w. i.v. 10 min after the restoration of blood flow and 100 min after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in male Sprague-Dawley rats...

The first synapses of the afferents of peripheral chemoreceptors are located in the Nucleus Tractus Solitarius (NTS) and there is evidence that short-term sustained hypoxia (SH - 24h, FiO2 0.1) facilitates glutamatergic transmission in NTS neurons of rats. Adenosine is an important neuromodulator of synaptic transmission and hypoxia contributes to increase its extracellular concentration. The A2A receptors mediate the excitatory actions of adenosine and are active players in the modulation of neuronal networks in the NTS...

Duration is an amodal feature common to all sensory experiences, but low-level processing of the temporal qualities of somatosensation remains poorly understood. The goal of the present study was to evaluate electrophysiological discrimination of parametric somatosensory stimuli to better understand how the brain processes the duration of tactile information. This research used a somatosensory mismatch negativity (sMMN) paradigm to evaluate electrophysiological sensitivity to differences in the duration of vibrotactile stimuli in healthy young adults...

Hypoxia-induced anapyrexia is thought to be a regulated decrease in body core temperature (Tcore ), but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Recent evidence suggests that lactate, a glycolysis product, could modulate neuronal excitability through the G protein-coupled receptor 81 (GPR81). The present study aims to elucidate the role of central lactate and GPR81 in a rat model of hypoxia-induced anapyrexia. The findings revealed that hypoxia (11.1% O2 , 2 h) led to an increase in lactate in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and a decrease inTcore ...

Inflammatory pain is one of the most prevalent forms of pain and negatively influences the quality of life. Neuromodulation has been an expanding field of pain medicine and is accepted by patients who have failed to respond to several conservative treatments. Despite its effectiveness, neuromodulation still lacks clinically robust evidence on inflammatory pain management. Optogenetics, which controls particular neurons or brain circuits with high spatiotemporal accuracy, has recently been an emerging area for inflammatory pain management and studying its mechanism...

Neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is an abnormal neurological condition caused by hypoxic-ischemic damage during the perinatal period. Human placenta derived mesenchymal stem cells (hPMSCs) have been shown to have protective and reparative effects in various neurological diseases; however, the research on HIE is insufficient. This study aimed to establish a rat model of HIE and transplant hPMSCs through the lateral ventricle after hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HI) to observe its protective effects and mechanisms, with a focus on brain apoptosis compared between groups...

The primary motor cortex (M1) receives dopaminergic (DAergic) projections from the midbrain which play a key role in modulating motor and cognitive processes, such as motor skill learning. However, little is known at the level of individual neurons about how dopamine (DA) and its receptors modulate the intrinsic properties of the different neuronal subpopulations in M1 and if this modulation depends on age. Using immunohistochemistry, we first mapped the cells expressing the DA D1 receptor across the different layers in M1, and quantified the number of pyramidal neurons (PNs) expressing the D1 receptor in the different layers, in young and adult mice...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorder that affects the central nervous system (CNS). It is characterized by a heterogeneous disease course involving demyelination and inflammation. In this study, we utilized two distinct animal models, cuprizone (CPZ)-induced demyelination and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), to replicate various aspects of the disease. We aimed to investigate the differential CNS responses by examining the proteomic profiles of EAE mice during the peak disease (15 days post-induction) and cuprizone-fed mice during the acute phase (38 days)...

Amyloid β protein (Aβ) is a critical factor in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Aβ induces apoptosis, and gasdermin-E (GSDME) expression can switch apoptosis to pyroptosis. In this study, we demonstrated that GSDME was highly expressed in the hippocampus of APP23/PS45 mouse models compared to that in age-matched wild-type mice. Aβ treatment induced pyroptosis by active caspase-3 /GSDME in SH-SY5Y cells. Furthermore, the knockdown of GSDME improved the cognitive impairments of APP23/PS45 mice by alleviating inflammatory response...

Recent studies have explored the circuitry involving the ventral hippocampus (vHPC), the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex, a pathway mainly activated to store contextual information efficiently. Lesions in the vHPC impair remote memory, but not in the short term. However, how the vHPC is affected by distinct memory strength or its role in systems consolidation has not yet been elucidated. Here, we investigatedhow distinct training intensities, with strong or weakcontextual fear conditioning, affect activation of the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) and the vHPC...

Comorbidity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) worsens the prognosis for each of these individual disorders. The current study aimed to identify neurocircuits potentially involved in regulation of PTSD-AUD comorbidity by mapping expression of c-Fos in male and female C57BL/6J mice following repeated predator stress (PS), modeled by exposure to dirty rat bedding. In experiment 1, the levels of c-Fos in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH) and the nucleus accumbens shell were higher after the second PS versus the first PS, indicating a sensitized response to this stressor...