Publications by authors named "Pamela Del Valle"
Article Synopsis
- Anxiety is a common non-motor symptom of Parkinson's disease that can begin before noticeable motor symptoms, with a higher prevalence in females despite the disease being more common in males.
- A study used young adult mice with a specific mutation related to Parkinson's to investigate differences in stress-induced anxiety behaviors between male and female subjects, revealing no baseline differences in anxiety responses.
- Following chronic stress, male mice showed different responses compared to their wildtype counterparts but female mice exhibited similar anxiety reactions to stress regardless of mutation, highlighting a significant sex-specific difference in how the mutation affects stress-related anxiety behaviors.
Anxiety is a psychiatric non-motor symptom of Parkinson's that can appear in the prodromal period, prior to significant loss of brainstem dopamine neurons and motor symptoms. Parkinson's-related anxiety affects females more than males, despite the greater prevalence of Parkinson's in males. How stress, anxiety and Parkinson's are related and the basis for a sex-specific impact of stress in Parkinson's are not clear.
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- - The study investigates how prefrontal cortex (PFC) projections develop and affect action-outcome associations in the dorsal striatum of postnatal mice, revealing that PFC axons achieve an adult-like pattern and synaptic strength early in development.
- - By using Hotspot analysis, researchers found that PFC axons form clusters within the first week after birth, stabilizing over time, while excitatory synapse density continues to increase until adulthood.
- - Mutant mice lacking the protein Cadherin-8 showed improper PFC axon targeting and reduced synaptic activity, leading to difficulties in action-outcome learning, emphasizing the importance of Cdh8 for the correct formation of these neural pathways.
Article Synopsis
- Rational decision-making relies on connections between the prefrontal cortex and the dorsomedial striatum, and disruptions in this projection are linked to various mental health disorders.
- A study using Hotspot Analysis found that the anatomical positioning of these projections develops early and remains largely stable into adulthood, with steady synapse formation throughout late postnatal development.
- Mice lacking the adhesion protein Cdh8 showed altered axon terminal positioning and difficulties in learning action-outcome associations, suggesting that early developmental mechanisms play a critical role in the function of corticostriatal connections.
Dengue is a viral mosquito-borne disease that rapidly spreads in tropical and subtropical countries, including the Philippines. One of its most distinguishing characteristics is the ability of the Dengue Virus (DENV) to easily surpass the innate responses of the body, thus activating B cells of the adaptive immunity to produce virus-specific antibodies. Moreover, Dengvaxia is the only licensed vaccine for DENV, but recent studies showed that seronegative individuals become prone to increased disease severity and hospitalization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that has been recognized for over 200 years by its clinically dominant motor system impairment. There are prominent non-motor symptoms as well, and among these, psychiatric symptoms of depression and anxiety and cognitive impairment are common and can appear earlier than motor symptoms. Although the neurobiology underlying these particular PD-associated non-motor symptoms is not completely understood, the identification of PARK genes that contribute to hereditary and sporadic PD has enabled genetic models in animals that, in turn, have fostered ever deepening analyses of cells, synapses, circuits, and behaviors relevant to non-motor psychiatric and cognitive symptoms of human PD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOxytocin (OT) mediates social habituation in rodent model systems, but its role in mediating this effect in other vertebrates is unknown. We used males of the African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, to investigate two aspects of isotocin (IT; an OT homolog) signaling in social habituation. First, we examined the expression of IT receptor 2 (ITR2) as well as two immediate early genes in brain regions implicated in social recognition.
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