Parkinsonian motor impairment predicts personality domains related to genetic risk and treatment outcomes in schizophrenia.

Identifying endophenotypes of schizophrenia is of critical importance and has profound implications on clinical practice. Here we propose an innovative approach to clarify the mechanims through which temperament and character deviance relates to risk for schizophrenia and predict long-term treatment outcomes. We recruited 61 antipsychotic naïve subjects with chronic schizophrenia, 99 unaffected relatives, and 68 healthy controls from rural communities in the Central Andes.

Detection, Assessment, and Management of Schizophrenia in an Andean Population of South America: Parkinsonism Testing and Transcranial Ultrasound as Preventive Tools.

Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric illness that is among the world's top 10 causes of long-term disability, affecting people who are just entering the peak of social, economic, and intellectual productivity. Such functional loss is particularly relevant in indigenous communities, which rely on change in functional status (rather than on the presence of symptoms) to identify mental illness. Particularly among the indigenous communities of Latin America, the gap between mental health need and availability of resources to reduce the burden has been judged "a case of outrageous exclusion.

Nitric oxide (NO) signaling as a potential therapeutic modality against psychostimulants.

Abuse of psychostimulants presents a significant health and social problem worldwide. Traditionally, the dopaminergic system has received much attention for its role in the development and manifestation of addictive behavior. The identification of the close interaction between the dopaminergic and glutamatergic pathway and by extension the nitric oxide (NO) signaling pathway (the nitrergic system) have provided a broader scope on the mechanisms underlying the development of addictive behavior following exposure to cocaine and methamphetamine.

Impairments in fear conditioning in mice lacking the nNOS gene.

The fear conditioning paradigm is used to investigate the roles of various genes, neurotransmitters, and substrates in the formation of fear learning related to contextual and auditory cues. In the brain, nitric oxide (NO) produced by neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) functions as a retrograde neuronal messenger that facilitates synaptic plasticity, including the late phase of long-term potentiation (LTP) and formation of long-term memory (LTM). Evidence has implicated NO signaling in synaptic plasticity and LTM formation following fear conditioning, yet little is known about the role of the nNOS gene in fear learning.

The neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) gene contributes to the regulation of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) by cocaine.

Recently, we demonstrated that intact nitric oxide (NO) signaling is essential for the development of cocaine behavioral sensitization in adulthood [M.A. Balda, K.

Development and persistence of long-lasting behavioral sensitization to cocaine in female mice: role of the nNOS gene.

Our recent studies have shown that the neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) gene is required for the development and persistence of psychomotor sensitization to cocaine in adult but not adolescent male mice (Balda, M.A., Anderson, K.

Differential role of the nNOS gene in the development of behavioral sensitization to cocaine in adolescent and adult B6;129S mice.

Rationale: Previous studies have suggested the involvement of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) in the development of sensitization to psychostimulants. Ontogeny-dependent differences in the response to psychostimulants have been reported.

Objective: The objectives were to investigate (a) the short- and long-term consequences of adolescent and adult cocaine exposure on behavioral sensitization and (b) the role of the nNOS gene in behavioral sensitization in adolescent and adult mice.

Adolescent and adult responsiveness to the incentive value of cocaine reward in mice: role of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) gene.

A major concern in adolescent psychostimulant abuse is the long-term consequence of this practice, because early drug exposure may cause long-term adaptations, which render the organism more susceptible to drug abuse later in life. The incentive value of drug and natural reward in rodents is commonly assessed by the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm, which involves Pavlovian learning. The aims of the present study were to investigate: a) the acquisition, expression, maintenance and reinstatement of cocaine CPP from periadolescence (PD24-45) through adulthood (PD70); b) potential sexual dimorphism in adolescence and adulthood in response to cocaine-induced CPP; and c) the role of the neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) gene in long-term neural plasticity underlying responsiveness to cocaine and cocaine-associated cues.