神经生物学

In vivo microdialysis has become a widely used tool to help elucidate the neurochemical alterations accompanying epilepsy, as well as the mechanisms of action of both old and new generation antiepileptic drugs. With the need of novel antiepileptic drugs for the high percentage of pharmaco ...

Microdialysis sampling in combination with a suitable analytical method enables in vivo monitoring of histamine release and metabolism in selected brain structures of experimental animals including rats and mice. In the alkaline medium, histamine reacts with o-phthalaldehy ...

While a longstanding body of evidence has suggested that nitric oxide plays a key role in maintaining vascular tone, work over the last decade has indicated that nitric oxide also is an important messenger in the central nervous system. Due to the extremely labile nature of this molecule, quantit ...

Most methods for analyzing microdialysis samples require 1–20-min fraction collection times and off-line analysis of 1–50 min per sample; however, it is important to improve the temporal resolution to measure fast neurochemical events that go unnoticed with slower analyses. For exam ...

The microdialysis technique has proved to be a powerful neuropharmacological tool for the measurement of extracellular levels of neurotransmitters in brains of freely moving animals. However, care in its application is essential if reliable results are to be obtained. More recent de ...

The development of analytical technologies must continue to improve to keep in step with new findings in the neurosciences. Neuropeptides serve a wide range of functions in the CNS and scientists study them intensively for a spectrum of neurological and psychiatric disorders. However, t ...

Microdialysis (MD) procedure is a versatile technique that allows the analysis of small molecular weight compounds from the interstitial space in different tissues. MD was used extensively in neuroscience animal studies at the end of last century, while only a single MD study in the human bra ...

In this chapter, we present a detailed protocol for culturing the adult Drosophila brain ex vivo and discuss some of the possibilities this method opens up. Mature Drosophila brains can be easily maintained in culture for a long period of time, with very little deterioration. Explanting and cult ...

The developing Drosophila melanogaster central nervous system is populated by asymmetrically dividing neural stem cells called neuroblasts, derived from ectodermal or neuroepithelial precursors. Neuroblasts divide asymmetrically, self-renewing the neuroblast a ...

For many decades, primary neuron cultures of Drosophila have been used complementary to work in vivo. Primary cultures were instrumental for the analysis of physiological properties of Drosophila neurons and synapses, and they were used for the analysis of developmental processes. Re ...

Functional and anatomical dissection of neural circuits is often hindered by the complexity of such systems. With only 10,000 neurons, the central nervous system of the Drosophila larva is at least one order of magnitude simpler than its adult counterpart. Despite this numerical simplici ...

The neural circuits that underlie motion vision in Drosophila provide an excellent model system for studying the logic of neural computation. A rich history of quantitative behavioral analysis has provided a detailed theoretical framework for investigating the neuronal basis of m ...

Drosophila has become a powerful experimental animal for the analysis of neuronal circuits and computations underlying innate behavior. In Drosophila, perturbational genetics is currently combined with the direct recording of neural activity in the CNS and eventually the quant ...

Neurons communicate at synapses by releasing neurotransmitters from synaptic vesicles, and this communication underlies information transfer in neuronal circuits. While classic methodologies including electrophysiology and electron microscopy are still extens ...

Single cell labeling allows identification of neuron types based on neurite trajectories, an essential step to understand brain anatomy and function. For years, various techniques have been developed to achieve in vivo single cell labeling. In Drosophila, several genetic mosaic app ...

Studying the formation of neural networks requires a thorough understanding of their constituent neurons, their development, connectivity and electrical properties. Neuronal morphology is a key element, encompassing parameters important for neuronal function: projec ...

Drosophila combines advanced genetics with a brain of ideal size for high-resolution imaging in toto. However, imaging of intracellular compartments pushes the limits of light microscopy in every system, and at the subcellular level the small size of fly neurons presents a challenge. In th ...

The description of the anatomy of neural circuits provides a framework for predictions about their �functions. During the last 2 decades, the explosion of genetically encoded tools for manipulating and visualizing the neural circuits in the fruit fly allowed important advances in corr ...

The Drosophila brain with an estimated 100,000 neurons provides at once an excellent opportunity to describe a complex brain in great detail and to identify the genetic and neurobiological basis of a wide array of behaviors. Furthermore, the sequencing of the genome with the concurrent iden ...

The Ras-controlled extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway mediates a large number of cellular events, from proliferation to survival, from synaptic plasticity to memory formation. In order to study the role of the two major ERK isoforms in the brain, ERK1 and ERK2, we have gener ...