B vitamins and n-3 fatty acids for brain development and function: review of human studies.

Background: Nutrition is one of many factors that affect brain development and functioning, and in recent years the role of certain nutrients has been investigated. B vitamins and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are two of the most promising and widely studied nutritional factors.

Methods: In this review, we provide an overview of human studies published before August 2011 on how vitamin B(6), folate, vitamin B(12) and n-3 PUFA may affect the brain, their nutrient status and the existing evidence for an association between these nutrients and brain development, brain functioning and depression during different stages of the life cycle.

Antiglucocorticoids, neurogenesis and depression.

Recent evidence suggests that antiglucocorticoids, like conventional antidepressants, may recover depressive symptoms by boosting hippocampal neurogenesis. Here, we explore several possible antiglucocorticoid-based antidepressive therapeutic strategies. Firstly, we review specific glucocorticoid receptor/antagonist interactions.

Lentivirus-mediated transgene delivery to the hippocampus reveals sub-field specific differences in expression.

Background: In the adult hippocampus, the granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus is a heterogeneous structure formed by neurons of different ages, morphologies and electrophysiological properties. Retroviral vectors have been extensively used to transduce cells of the granule cell layer and study their inherent properties in an intact brain environment. In addition, lentivirus-based vectors have been used to deliver transgenes to replicative and non-replicative cells as well, such as post mitotic neurons of the CNS.

Temporal and functional dynamics of the transcriptome during nerve growth factor-induced differentiation.

The rat pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12) is an extensively used model to study neuronal differentiation. The initial signaling cascades triggered by nerve growth factor (NGF) stimulation have been subject to thorough investigation and are well characterized. However, knowledge of temporal transcriptomal regulation during NGF-induced differentiation of PC12 cells remains far from complete.

Hippocampal 72-kDa heat shock protein expression varies according to mice learning performance independently from chronic exposure to stress.

The possibility that the inducible 72-kDa heat shock protein (hsp72) is involved in learning-related plasticity mechanisms was investigated in two inbred strains of mice that show spontaneous differences in spatial learning performance as well as an opposite reactivity to stress. Induction of hsp72 after radial maze training was measured by immunoblotting in the hippocampus of C57BL/6 (C57) and DBA/2 (DBA) inbred mice exposed or nonexposed to chronic acoustic stress. In agreement with previous studies, inter-strain differences in radial maze performance were found in nonstressed mice with C57 mice showing the higher scores.