Publications by authors named "Marta Jelitai"

Throughout life animals inevitably encounter unforeseen threatening events. Activity of principal cells in the hippocampus is tuned for locations and for salient stimuli in the animals' environment thus forming a map known to be pivotal for guiding behavior. Here, we explored if a code of threatening stimuli exists in the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus of mice by recording neuronal response to aversive stimuli delivered at changing locations.

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Hippocampal theta oscillations orchestrate faster beta-to-gamma oscillations facilitating the segmentation of neural representations during navigation and episodic memory. Supra-theta rhythms of hippocampal CA1 are coordinated by local interactions as well as inputs from the entorhinal cortex (EC) and CA3 inputs. However, theta-nested gamma-band activity in the medial septum (MS) suggests that the MS may control supra-theta CA1 oscillations.

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Ascending serotonergic/glutamatergic projection from the median raphe region (MRR) to the hippocampal formation regulates both encoding and consolidation of memory and the oscillations associated with them. The firing of various types of MRR neurons exhibits rhythmic modulation coupled to hippocampal oscillatory activity. A possible intermediary between rhythm-generating forebrain regions and entrained ascending modulation may be the GABAergic circuit in the MRR, known to be targeted by a diverse array of top-down inputs.

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Cerebellar climbing-fiber-mediated complex spikes originate from neurons in the inferior olive (IO), are critical for motor coordination, and are central to theories of cerebellar learning. Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic-nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels expressed by IO neurons have been considered as pacemaker currents important for oscillatory and resonant dynamics. Here, we demonstrate that in vitro, network actions of HCN1 channels enable bidirectional glutamatergic synaptic responses, while local actions of HCN1 channels determine the timing and waveform of synaptically driven action potentials.

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Knowledge of synaptic input is crucial for understanding synaptic integration and ultimately neural function. However, in vivo, the rates at which synaptic inputs arrive are high, so that it is typically impossible to detect single events. We show here that it is nevertheless possible to extract the properties of the events and, in particular, to extract the event rate, the synaptic time constants, and the properties of the event size distribution from in vivo voltage-clamp recordings.

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Feedforward excitatory and inhibitory circuits regulate cerebellar output, but how these circuits interact to shape the somatodendritic excitability of Purkinje cells during motor behaviour remains unresolved. Here we perform dendritic and somatic patch-clamp recordings in vivo combined with optogenetic silencing of interneurons to investigate how dendritic excitation and inhibition generates bidirectional (that is, increased or decreased) Purkinje cell output during self-paced locomotion. We find that granule cells generate a sustained depolarization of Purkinje cell dendrites during movement, which is counterbalanced by variable levels of feedforward inhibition from local interneurons.

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Retinoic acid (RA) is present at sites of neurogenesis in both the embryonic and adult brain. While it is widely accepted that RA signaling is involved in the regulation of neural stem cell differentiation, little is known about vitamin A utilization and biosynthesis of active retinoids in the neurogenic niches, or about the details of retinoid metabolism in neural stem cells and differentiating progenies. Here we provide data on retinoid responsiveness and RA production of distinct neural stem cell/neural progenitor populations.

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Preferential adhesion of neural stem cells to surfaces covered with a novel synthetic adhesive polypeptide (AK-cyclo[RGDfC]) provided a unique, rapid procedure for isolating radial glia-like cells from both fetal and adult rodent brain. Radial glia-like (RGl) neural stem/progenitor cells grew readily on the peptide-covered surfaces under serum-free culture conditions in the presence of EGF as the only growth factor supplement. Proliferating cells derived either from fetal (E 14.

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The plasticity of dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) has been demonstrated by several studies showing that they appear to self-maintain through several passages, giving rise to a variety of cells. The aim of the present study was to differentiate DPSCs to mature neuronal cells showing functional evidence of voltage gated ion channel activities in vitro. First, DPSC cultures were seeded on poly-l-lysine coated surfaces and pretreated for 48h with a medium containing basic fibroblast growth factor and the demethylating agent 5-azacytidine.

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Translocator protein 18 kDa, the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor by its earlier name, is a mitochondrial membrane protein associated with the mitochondrial permeability pore. While the function of the protein is not properly understood, it is known to play roles in necrotic and apoptotic processes of the neural tissue. In the healthy adult brain, TSPO expression is restricted to glial cells.

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Glutamate acting on NMDA receptors (NMDARs) is known to influence cerebellar granule cell migration. Subunit composition of NMDARs in granule cells changes characteristically during development: NR2B subunit containing receptors are abundant during migration towards the internal granule cell layer but are gradually replaced by NR2A and/or NR2C subunits once the final position is reached. Cerebellar granule cell migration was investigated using mutant mouse lines either with a deletion of the NR2C gene (NR2C(-/-) mice) or expressing NR2B instead of the NR2C subunit (NR2C-2B mice).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates NMDA receptor subunit expression and functional NMDA-gated ion channels during neuronal differentiation of the NE-4C cell line induced by retinoic acid (RA).
  • NR2A, NR2B, and NR2D subunit transcripts were present in both undifferentiated and differentiated cells, while NR2C was only temporarily expressed early in differentiation.
  • Functional NMDA receptor activity was linked to the presence of mature NR2B subunits and appeared after a lag period, suggesting that specific stages of neuronal development are crucial for the formation of functional NMDA receptors.
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The effects of KCl-treatment on the survival and proliferation of NE-4C self-renewing neural progenitor cells were investigated during early phases of in vitro induced neurogenesis. NE-4C cells, derived from the anterior brain vesicles of embryonic mouse (E9), divided continuously under non-inducing conditions, but acquired neuronal features within 6 days, if induced by all-trans retinoic acid (RA). During the first 2 days of induction, the cells went on proliferating and did not show signs of morphological differentiation.

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