Publications by authors named "Mina Sadighi Alvandi"
Article Synopsis
- Excessive cocaine use changes parts of the brain called white and gray matter, but how much it affects these areas can depend on the individual.
- A specific protein called serotonin transporter (5-HTT) influences how likely someone is to become addicted to cocaine.
- Research on rats showed that those with less 5-HTT self-administered more cocaine and had a smaller brain region called the amygdala compared to normal rats, showing a link between brain structure and addiction risk.
Drug addiction is associated with aberrant memory and permanent functional changes in neural circuits. It is known that exposure to drugs like morphine is associated with positive emotional states and reward-related memory. However, the underlying mechanisms in terms of neural plasticity in the ventral hippocampus, a region involved in associative memory and emotional behaviors, are not fully understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The interaction between somatosensory cortex and thalamus via a thalamocortical loop is a theory behind induction of absence epilepsy. Inside peri-oral somatosensory (S1po) and primary somatosensory forelimb (S1fl) regions, excitatory and inhibitory systems are not balanced and GABAergic inhibitory synapses seem to play a fundamental role in short-term plasticity alterations.
Methods: We investigated the effects of Ethosuximide on presynaptic changes by utilizing paired-pulse stimulation that was recorded from somatosensory cortex in 18 WAG\Rij rats during epileptic activity.