and Evaluation of Pellotine: A Hypnotic Alkaloid.

Quality of life is often reduced in patients with sleep-wake disorders. Insomnia is commonly treated with benzodiazepines, despite their well-known side effects. Pellotine (), a alkaloid, has been reported to have short-acting sleep-inducing properties in humans.

Visual Evoked Potentials as an Early-Stage Biomarker in the rTg4510 Tauopathy Mouse Model.

Background: Tauopathies such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are characterized by formation of neurofibrillary tangles consisting of hyperphosphorylated tau protein. Early pathophysiological and functional changes related to neurofibrillary tangles formation are considered to occur prior to extensive neurodegeneration. Hyperphosphorylated tau has been detected in postmortem retinas of AD and FTD patients, and the visual pathway is an easily accessible system in a clinical setting.

Early impairments of visually-driven neuronal ensemble dynamics in the rTg4510 tauopathy mouse model.

Tau protein pathology is a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's Disease or frontotemporal dementia. Synaptic dysfunction and abnormal visual evoked potentials have been reported in murine models of tauopathy, but little is known about the state of the network activity on a single neuronal level prior to brain atrophy. In the present study, oscillatory rhythms and single-cell calcium activity of primary visual cortex pyramidal neuron population were investigated in basal and light evoked states in the rTg4510 tauopathy mouse model prior to neurodegeneration.