Pharmacological depletion of microglia protects against alcohol-induced corticolimbic neurodegeneration during intoxication in male rats.

Excessive alcohol use damages the brain, especially corticolimbic regions such as the hippocampus and rhinal cortices, leading to learning and memory problems. While neuroimmune reactivity is hypothesized to underly alcohol-induced damage, direct evidence of the causative role of microglia, brain-resident immune cells, in this process is lacking. Here, we depleted microglia using PLX5622 (PLX), a CSF1R inhibitor commonly used in mice, but rarely in rats, and assessed cell death following binge-like alcohol exposure in male rats.

Beta Burst-Driven Adaptive Deep Brain Stimulation Improves Gait Impairment and Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Freezing of gait (FOG) is a debilitating symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD) that is often refractory to medication. Pathological prolonged beta bursts within the subthalamic nucleus (STN) are associated with both worse impairment and freezing behavior in PD, which are improved with deep brain stimulation (DBS). The goal of the current study was to investigate the feasibility, safety, and tolerability of beta burst-driven adaptive DBS (aDBS) for FOG in PD.

Neuroimmune Activation and Microglia Reactivity in Female Rats Following Alcohol Dependence.

The rates of alcohol use disorder among women are growing, yet little is known about how the female brain is affected by alcohol. The neuroimmune system, and specifically microglia, have been implicated in mediating alcohol neurotoxicity, but most preclinical studies have focused on males. Further, few studies have considered changes to the microglial phenotype when examining the effects of ethanol on brain structure and function.

Unraveling the complexities of programming neural adaptive deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease.

Over the past three decades, deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease (PD) has been applied in a continuous open loop fashion, unresponsive to changes in a given patient's state or symptoms over the course of a day. Advances in recent neurostimulator technology enable the possibility for closed loop adaptive DBS (aDBS) for PD as a treatment option in the near future in which stimulation adjusts in a demand-based manner. Although aDBS offers great clinical potential for treatment of motor symptoms, it also brings with it the need for better understanding how to implement it in order to maximize its benefits.

Adolescent Intermittent Ethanol Drives Modest Neuroinflammation but Does Not Escalate Drinking in Male Rats.

During adolescence, the brain is highly susceptible to alcohol-induced damage and subsequent neuroimmune responses, effects which may enhance development of an alcohol use disorder (AUD). Neuroimmune reactions are implicated in adolescent alcohol exposure escalating adulthood drinking. Therefore, we investigated whether intermittent alcohol exposure in male, adolescent rats (AIE) escalated adult drinking via two-bottle choice (2BC).