Developmental exposure to ethanol increases the neuronal vulnerability to oxygen-glucose deprivation in cerebellar granule cell cultures.

Prenatal alcohol exposure is associated with microencephaly, cognitive and behavioral deficits, and growth retardation. Some of the mechanisms of ethanol-induced injury, such as high level oxidative stress and overexpression of pro-apoptotic genes, can increase the sensitivity of fetal neurons towards hypoxic/ischemic stress associated with normal labor. Thus, alcohol-induced sequelae may be the cumulative result of direct ethanol toxicity and increased neuronal vulnerability towards metabolic stressors, including hypoxia.

Chronic NGF treatment induces somatic hyperexcitability in cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons of the rat.

Adult rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons cultured in the presence of 100-ng/mL NGF were reported to show spontaneous action potentials in the cell-attached recording. In this study, underlying mechanisms were examined in the whole-cell and outside-out voltage clamp recording. In 75% neurons with on-cell firing, transient inward current spikes were repetitively recorded in the voltage clamp mode at -50 mV in the whole-cell configuration (named "Isp").

Vasopressin-induced intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration responses in non-neuronal cells of the rat dorsal root ganglion.

Arginine-vasopressin (AVP) is a nonapeptide of hypothalamic origin that has been shown to exert many important cognitive and physiological functions in neurons and terminals of both the central and peripheral nervous system (CNS and PNS). Here we report for the first time that AVP induced an increase in intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration ([Ca²⁺](i)) in non-neuronal cells isolated from the rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) and cultured in vitro. The ratiometric [Ca²⁺](i) measurements showed that AVP evoked [Ca²⁺](i) responses in the non-neuronal cells and these concentration-dependent (100 pM to 1 μM) responses increased with days in vitro in culture, reaching a maximum amplitude after 4-5 day.

Repeated PTZ treatment at 25-day intervals leads to a highly efficient accumulation of doublecortin in the dorsal hippocampus of rats.

Background: Neurogenesis persists throughout life in the adult mammalian brain. Because neurogenesis can only be assessed in postmortem tissue, its functional significance remains undetermined, and identifying an in vivo correlate of neurogenesis has become an important goal. By studying pentylenetetrazole-induced brain stimulation in a rat model of kindling we accidentally discovered that 25±1 days periodic stimulation of Sprague-Dawley rats led to a highly efficient increase in seizure susceptibility.