实验仪器使用技术

Following severe spinal cord injury (SCI), brain locomotor command systems are disconnected from spinal motor networks, resulting in paralysis caudal to the lesion. In higher vertebrates, such as birds and mammals, the CNS is a restrictive environment for axonal regeneration. As a result, ...

Spinal injury is produced by traumatic and nontraumatic causes that often induce long-term disability. In order to limit tissue damage and functional impairment, it is important to intervene at an early stage after the primary insult to restrain damage extension. This objective is diffic ...

The spinal cord constitutes a key structure of the central nervous system. It is involved in the transmission of signals between the brain and the rest of the body through numerous ascending and descending pathways. It also contains relatively simple reflex arcs as well as more complex neuronal c ...

The anatomical pattern of damage following upon traumatic injury to the human spinal cord is dependent upon the manner in which the injury is sustained. Hyperflexion typically results in anterior spinal cord injury, hyperextension in central spinal cord injury, stab wounds in hemisect ...

This chapter reflects the yearning for discoveries within the field of spinal cord injury (SCI) and points out the difficulties, opportunities, as well as possibilities to relate and translate the results from basic science to clinical management. After a brief presentation of “spinal co ...

Animal models are indispensable for research on central nervous system disorders and particularly relevant and useful in spinal cord injury (SCI) research. In contrast to neurodegenerative diseases, trauma inflicted to animals is inherently similar (albeit not identical) to the s ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a valuable in vivo imaging method for investigating experimental spinal cord injury (SCI). In this chapter a variety of MRI techniques will be described including anatomical, functional, and cellular MRI. The benefits and challenges of each technique ...

A serious complication of aortic cross clamping during thoracic and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair surgery is ischemic spinal cord injury (ISCI) and subsequent postoperative paraplegia. Several experimental models have been developed in various species that repr ...

Nonhuman primate models (NHPs) of spinal injury and repair play an increasingly important role in the translation of promising rodent data to the spinal injured patient. This chapter discusses why NHP models of spinal injury are important and provides a description of each of the different le ...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by a progressive degeneration of dopamine (DA) neurons and a chronic loss of motor functions. The investigation of progressive degenerative mechanisms and possible neuroprotective approaches for PD depends upon the development of an exp ...

Rapid changes in extracellular dopamine concentrations in freely moving or anesthetized rats can be detected using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV). Background-subtracted FSCV is a real-time electrochemical technique that can monitor neurochemical transmission in t ...

Brain dopamine pathways serve wide-ranging functions including the control of movement, reward, cognition, learning, and mood. Consequently, dysfunction of dopamine transmission has been implicated in clinical conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, addi ...

Actions of extracellular dopamine released in the central nervous system are primarily terminated by the dopamine transporter. This protein is also a target for therapeutic and abused psychostimulant drugs. Different methods used to study dopamine transporter function, its exp ...

Dopamine neurotransmission accounts for a number of important brain functions across species including memory formation, the anticipation of reward, cognitive facilities, and drug addiction. Despite this functional significance, relatively little is known of the cellular ...

In this chapter, we describe the identification and cloning of D2-like dopamine receptor (DR) genes in zebrafish, a vertebrate model genetic organism. To identify DR genes, we performed searches of the zebrafish genomic sequence database that yielded contig segments of several D2-like DR ...

Alterations in the activity of the dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) have been implicated in several neurological and psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Tourette syndrome, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (A ...

In mammals, dopamine G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) are segregated into two categories: D1-like (D1R and D5R) and D2-like (D2Rshort, D2Rlong, D3R, and D4R) subtypes. D1R and D5R are primarily coupled to stimulatory heterotrimeric GTP-binding proteins (Gs/olf) leading to activati ...

Optimal dopamine tone is required for the normal cortical function; however it is still unclear how cortical-dopamine-release affects information processing in individual cortical neurons. Thousands of glutamatergic inputs impinge onto elaborate dendritic trees of neoco ...

It is evident that G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) such as D2 dopamine receptor and functionally related Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) can engage both in G protein-dependent (e.g., cAMP-mediated) and -independent β-arrestin-mediated signaling modalities. Both of t ...

Until very recently, dopamine receptors, like other G-protein-coupled receptors, were believed to function as individual units on the cell surface. Now it has been described by several groups including ours that dopamine receptors not only function as homomers but also form heteromers w ...