Bmc Neurosci
-
Many commonly used chemotherapeutic agents, such as Cisplatin, are restricted in their potential anti-neoplastic effectiveness by their side effects, with one of the most problematic being induction of peripheral neuropathy. Although a number of different neurotrophic, neuroprotective or anti-oxidant treatments have been tried in order to prevent or treat the neuropathies, to date they have met with limited success. Phenoxodiol is a new chemotherapeutic agent that has anti-proliferative and apoptotic effects on a range of cancer cells. PC12 cells are a commonly used neuronal cell model for examination of neurite outgrowth. In this study we examined whether phenoxodiol could protect against Cisplatin induced neurite inhibition in PC12 cells as an indication of the potential to protect against neuropathy. ⋯ In addition to its potential as a chemotherapeutic agent Phenoxodiol may thus also have the potential to be used in conjunction with Cisplatin chemotherapy to prevent induction of neuropathy.
-
Development of neural networks requires that synapses are formed, eliminated and stabilized. At the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), agrin/MuSK signaling, by triggering downstream pathways, causes clustering and phosphorylation of postsynaptic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs). Postnatally, AChR aggregates are stabilized by molecular pathways that are poorly characterized. Gain or loss of function of Src-family kinases (SFKs) disassembles AChR clusters at adult NMJs in vivo, whereas AChR aggregates disperse rapidly upon withdrawal of agrin from cultured src-/-;fyn-/- myotubes. This suggests that a balance between protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) and protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) such as those of the Src-family may be essential in stabilizing clusters of AChRs. ⋯ Our data are the first to show that the fine balance between PTPs and SFKs is a key aspect in stabilization of postsynaptic AChR clusters. One phosphatase that acts in this equilibrium is SHP-2. Thus, PTPs such as SHP-2 stabilize AChR clusters under normal circumstances, but when these PTPs are not balanced by SFKs, they render clusters unstable.
-
Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (approximately 150-300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. ⋯ The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon.
-
Comparative Study
Posttraumatic secondary brain insults exacerbates neuronal injury by altering metabotropic glutamate receptors.
Our previous studies indicated that metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are deeply involved in the secondary processes after diffuse brain injury (DBI). In the present study, we used a rodent DBI model to determine whether hypotension exacerbates neuronal injury as a secondary brain insult (SBI) after traumatic brain injury (TBI) by changing the expression of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in the cerebral cortex. ⋯ The results suggest posttraumatic SBI may exacerbate neuronal injury or brain injury by altering expression of mGluRs, and more emphasis should therefore be put on the prevention and treatment of SBI.
-
Several investigators have coupled toxins to neuropeptides for the purpose of lesioning specific neurons in the central nervous system. By producing deficits in function these toxin conjugates have yielded valuable information about the role of these cells. In an effort to specifically stimulate cells rather than kill them we have conjugated the neuropeptide substance P to the catalytic subunit of cholera toxin (SP-CTA). This conjugate should be taken up selectively by neurokinin receptor expressing neurons resulting in enhanced adenylate cyclase activity and neuronal firing. ⋯ The finding that stimulation of adenylate cyclase in neurokinin receptor expressing neurons in the spinal cord produces thermal hyperalgesia is consistent with the known actions of these neurons. These data demonstrate that cholera toxin can be targeted to specific cell types by coupling the catalytic subunit to a peptide agonist for a g-protein coupled receptor. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that SP-CTA can be used as a tool to study sensitization of central neurons in vivo in the absence of an injury.