神经生物学

Viral-vector-based gene therapy is a powerful tool that allows experimental studies of species that previously were not amenable to genetic manipulation. Nonhuman primates (NHPs) are an invaluable resource for the study of genetic regulation of disease mechanisms. The main disadv ...

Recombinant AAV vectors currently enjoy an excellent track record in brain applications such as generating preclinical models of neurodegeneration and gene therapy for brain disorders. Indeed, rAAV vectors have been useful in modeling diseases such as Parkinson’s disease (disc ...

The bacteriophage P1-derived Cre/lox recombination system has been extensively used to engineer the genome of cultured cells and experimental animals. Cre recombinase recognizes the loxP site, which is composed of two 13-bp inverted repeats and an 8-bp spacer region, and mediates both i ...

Drug-regulatable site-specific recombinases have become, during the last decade, a central tool for �transgenesis. They allow, depending on the constructs used, the activation or inactivation of target genes in a time-dependent or, if combined with the use of a specific promoter, in a time- a ...

Immunotoxin cell targeting is a transgenic animal technology used to eliminate specific cell types from a complex neural circuitry by using cytotoxic activity of recombinant immunotoxins, which are composed of an antibody variable region fused to bacterial toxin fragments. This te ...

Antipredator behavior is triggered by a combination of internal proximate mechanisms (anatomical receptors and the physiological processes that regulate their function) and external environmental cues that signal the context and timing of when behavior is likely to be effecti ...

Central monoamine systems (e.g., dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine) are associated with motivation, locomotion, social behavior, emotion, and mood. Biogenic amine transporters regulate neurotransmission by removing neurotransmitters from synapses and extracel ...

Addiction is a complex psychiatric disorder characterised by a spectrum of compulsive drug-seeking behaviours and a persistent tendency to relapse (return to drug taking) even after prolonged periods of abstinence. The most commonly used models for the study of drug reward and depende ...

Alcoholism is a disorder that affects human beings during every stage of the lifespan. Many animal models have been developed to study alcoholism, including those used to assess alcohol preference, the effects of alcohol withdrawal, and the development of tolerance. Knowledge gained fr ...

The study of complex traits is one of the greatest current challenges in biology, and the exact mechanism whereby individual genes cause small quantitative variation in any given trait still remains largely unresolved. In the case of behavioural traits, with lower heritabilities and rep ...

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors appear to be quite ancient phylogenetically and are used in the nervous systems of a great number of species across broad parts of the animal kingdom. They play important roles in a variety of neurobehavioral functions from neuromuscular activation to ...

While zebrafish (Danio rerio) are widely utilized as a model species for neuroscience research, they also possess several qualities that make them particularly useful for studying stress and anxiety-related behaviors. Zebrafish neuroendocrine responses are robust, and corre ...

The olfactory sensory system is a part of the nervous system that has something for everyone; with as many as 1,000 genes coding for olfactory receptors it sports the largest gene family in the vertebrate genome; the olfactory sensory neurons regenerate throughout life; the sensory neurons send ...

The zebrafish is an important model organism in developmental genetics, neurophysiology and biomedicine, but little is known about its natural ecology and behaviour. It is a small, shoaling cyprinid, native to the flood-plains of the Indian subcontinent, where it is found in shallow, slow- ...

Studies of teleost spatial cognition have revealed that fish possess an impressive array of navigational abilities and are capable of spatial memory based tasks utilizing both egocentric and allocentric cues. The emergence of zebrafish as an optimal animal model for developmental, g ...

Shortly after larval zebrafish become free swimming their behavior is modulated by both autochthonous signals and external stimuli. Larvae show rapid responses to a range of sensory cues but are also capable of executing extended behavioral programs in response to changes in the enviro ...

The unique properties of zebrafish, such as its high reproductive capability, small size, simple genome, and relatively low maintenance cost, make it a cheap and effective genetic model for scientists to study. As a result, scientists have acquired an enormous quantity of zebrafish genetic ...

Most research to date has used experimental models in rodents which fail to mimic the underlying causes of stroke in patients or the primary confounding factors. Available data indicate that factors such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, age, and inflammation have a m ...

Physical therapy and social interactions between the stroke patient and health care professionals or relatives facilitate the process of recovery and promote the improvement of neurological function after stroke. These observations can be mimicked in the experimental setting ...

There are numerous ways by which the middle cerebral artery (MCA) can be occluded in order to provoke a focal cerebral ischemia (either of a permanent nature or with reperfusion) in experimental animals: electrocoagulation, microvascular clips, sutures or intraluminal thread models – t ...