神经生物学

Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) is a strong candidate gene for schizophrenia and major mental disorders. After its discovery in the Scottish chromosomal translocation, DISC1 has gained considerable attention in neuropsychiatric research. Recent studies have implic ...

Accumulating evidence indicates that the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders does not strictly conform to the common disease/common allele hypothesis. The contribution of common genetic variants, while likely, may be fundamentally different from those of rare gene ...

Evidence of altered antioxidant systems and signs of elevated oxidative stress are reported in peripheral tissue and brain of schizophrenic patients, including low levels of glutathione (GSH), a major thiol antioxidant and redox buffer. Functional and genetic data indicate that an im ...

Evidence obtained from schizophrenia post-mortem brain studies have pointed to deficiencies in inhibitory systems, in particular of the fast-spiking parvalbumin (PV)-positive inhibitory interneurons, as responsible for several aspects of schizophrenia pathophysio ...

It is now widely acknowledged that exposure to adverse environmental factors in utero may not only affect how the brain develops but have long-lasting consequences for later brain function in the adult offspring. This idea has gained particular prominence amongst researchers interes ...

Hypoxia has been discussed as a possible factor of obstetric complications in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. This study investigated the effects of chronic neonatal hypoxia in rats as an animal model of schizophrenia. Methods: (1) After chronic neonatal hypoxia between postn ...

An increasing number of epidemiologic studies have implicated in utero exposure to infection in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia. Recent work has capitalized on the use of prospectively acquired data on infection based on maternal biomarkers. These studies suggest that seve ...

This chapter provides an overview on exposure to methylazoxymethanol (MAM) at embryonic day 17 as a promising animal model for schizophrenia that mimics behavioral abnormalities and deficits in prefrontal cortex networks. This early insult produces in adult offspring from E17 MAM- ...

The neonatal ventral hippocampal lesion (NVHL) rat model of schizophrenia has demonstrated broad heuristic utility as an investigative platform encompassing many of the behavioral, neurobiological, and developmental aspects of this devastating neuropsychiatric illn ...

Schizophrenia, a most prevalent brain disorder, remains to be one of the least understood. Unlike Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia lacks clear pathological lesions, which has made it difficult to model in animals. However, genetic studies have recently iden ...

There is substantial evidence that psychosis is characterized by GABAergic gene promoters that are in a closed chromatin state, leading to reduced transcription of proteins essential for GABAergic and synaptic function in the forebrain. Two critical genes that are downregulated in c ...

NMDA receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction theory of schizophrenia has been assessed in rodents with pharmacological intervention and global knockout strategy of NMDAR blockade. However, these manipulations of NMDAR function have been relatively coarse, affecting all NMDA recepto ...

The absence of a pharmacological therapy that is effective in the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) highlights the need for further research into the secondary mechanisms that are initiated by the traumatic event, and which determine eventual neurological outcome. Various an ...

Basal ganglia infarction is typically caused by the occlusion of deep arteries and the formation of relatively small lesions called lacunes. In this report, we describe a method to induce basal ganglia infarction by photothrombosis and show some of the characteristics of the method in compa ...

The middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) is the most common rodent model to mimic large vessel occlusion in the human. The intraluminal filament MCAO technique should, theoretically, produce ischemia both in the cortex and striatum. However, collateral blood flow can contribute to ma ...

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder associated with severe degeneration of basal ganglia neurons. Histologically, the striatum displays neurodegeneration of the intrinsic neurons of the striatum, whereas the behavioral symptoms are pr ...

This chapter is divided into three parts. In the first part, we introduce the theoretical foundation of instrumental conditioning and the commonly used methods to study it. In the second part, we review some recent work using these methods to investigate the role of the dorsal striatum in instrume ...

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disorder presenting with parkinsonism, cerebellar ataxia, and autonomic failure in various combinations. The main pathological hallmark is the formation of (oligo-) glial cytoplasmic inclusions (G ...

This chapter reviews the most common methods and protocols used to induce and assess excitotoxic lesions of the rodent striatum. Excitotoxic agents act through glutamate receptors to initiate intracellular cascades that can result in neuronal degeneration via both apoptotic and n ...

An overview is given of the structure and function of the mammalian cerebral commissures, with an emphasis on their role in interhemispheric communication. A major focus is placed on the use of commissurotomy as a method of selective disconnection of interhemispheric sensory-motor int ...