Early life stress influences basal ganglia dopamine receptors and novel object recognition of adolescent and adult rats.

Environmental stimuli in early life are recognized to affect brain development and behavior. Mother-pup interaction constitutes a determinant stimulus during this critical period. It is known that the dopaminergic system undergoes significant reorganization during adolescence and that dopamine receptors are involved in recognition memory.

Neonatal maternal separation affects metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 expression and anxiety-related behavior of adult rats.

Exposure to early life stress leads to long-term neurochemical and behavioral alterations. Stress-induced psychiatric disorders, such as depression, have recently been linked to dysregulation of glutamate signaling, mainly via its postsynaptic receptors. The role of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) in stress-induced psychopathology has been the target of several studies in humans.

Effects of an early life experience on rat brain cannabinoid receptors in adolescence and adulthood.

Neonatal handling is an experimental model of early life experience associated with resilience in later life challenges, altering the ability of animals to respond to stress. The endocannabinoid system of the brain modulates the neuroendocrine and behavioral effects of stress, while this system is also capable of being modulated by stress exposure itself. The present study has addressed the question of whether neonatal handling in rats could affect cannabinoid receptors, in an age- and sex-dependent manner, using hybridization and receptor binding techniques.

Geminin Participates in Differentiation Decisions of Adult Neural Stem Cells Transplanted in the Hemiparkinsonian Mouse Brain.

Neural stem cells have been considered as a source of stem cells that can be used for cell replacement therapies in neurodegenerative diseases, as they can be isolated and expanded in vitro and can be used for autologous grafting. However, due to low percentages of survival and varying patterns of differentiation, strategies that will enhance the efficacy of transplantation are under scrutiny. In this article, we have examined whether alterations in Geminin's expression, a protein that coordinates the balance between self-renewal and differentiation, can improve the properties of stem cells transplanted in 6-OHDA hemiparkinsonian mouse model.

Expression and phosphorylation of glutamate receptor subunits and CaMKII in a mouse model of Parkinsonism.

Dopaminergic deficiency of the weaver mutant mouse is a valuable tool to further our understanding of Parkinson׳s disease (PD) pathogenesis since dopaminergic neurons of the nigrostriatal pathway undergo spontaneous and progressive cell death. In the present study we investigated the changes in protein expression and phosphorylation of glutamate receptor subunits and αCaMKII in weaver striatum at the end of the third and sixth postnatal month. Using immunoblotting, we found increased immunoreactivity levels of both GluN2A and GluN2B subunits of NMDA receptors and GluA1 subunit of AMPA receptors approximately from 75% to 110% in the 3-month-old weaver striatum compared to control.