[Alzheimer's disease, amyloid peptide and synaptic dysfunction].

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the first cause of dementia that leads to insidious and progressive loss of memory and cognitive functions. In the early stages of AD, there is a strong correlation between memory impairment and cortical levels of soluble amyloid-β peptide oligomers (Aβ). It has become clear that Aβ disrupt glutamatergic synaptic function, which in turn may lead to the characteristic cognitive deficits.

Early temporal short-term memory deficits in double transgenic APP/PS1 mice.

We tested single APP (Tg2576) transgenic, PS1 (PS1dE9) transgenic, and double APP/PS1 transgenic mice at 3 and 6 months of age on the acquisition of a hippocampal-dependent operant "differential reinforcement of low rate schedule" (DRL) paradigm. In this task mice are required to wait for at least 10 seconds (DRL-10s) between 2 consecutive nose poke responses. Our data showed that while single APP and PS1 transgene expression did not affect DRL learning and performance, mice expressing double APP/PS1 transgenes were impaired in the acquisition of DRL-10s at 6 months, but not at 3 months of age.

Local facilitation of hippocampal metabotropic glutamate receptor-dependent long-term depression by corticosterone and dexamethasone.

Long-term potentiation and long-term depression (LTD) of synaptic efficacy, two major forms of synaptic plasticity, are believed to underlie learning processes and memory storage. We have recently shown that acute stress, through corticosterone release and stimulation of glucocorticoid receptors (GRs), facilitates the LTD elicited by the group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) agonist (R,S)-3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG) in hippocampal CA1 neurons. However, it is unknown whether sustained corticosterone release, per se, is also able to facilitate DHPG-elicited LTD in control (i.

A comparison of image deconvolution algorithms applied to the detection of endocytic vesicles in fluorescence images of neural proteins.

In this work we present a comparative study of three image deconvolution methods applied to fluorescence images of neural proteins. The purpose of this work is to compare the efficiency of these methods, in order to establish which one performs better the restoration of this type o image. Moreover we show that image deconvolution improve not only image quality, but detection capabilities and thus the counting of endocytic vesicles.

Acute stress facilitates hippocampal CA1 metabotropic glutamate receptor-dependent long-term depression.

Acute stress affects NMDA receptor (NMDAR)-dependent synaptic plasticity in the CA1 region of the hippocampus, with long-term potentiation and long-term depression (LTD) being, respectively, diminished and facilitated by acute exposure to stress. Here, we examined whether this facilitatory effect of stress on NMDAR-dependent LTD extends to metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR)-dependent LTD at Schaffer collateral-CA1 synapses. Application of a low dose (50 microM) of the selective group 1 mGluR agonist (RS)-3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG) promoted LTD in slices from stressed, but not from control, rats.