Publications by authors named "Reiner B"

Recent studies show that systemic administration of a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonist is sufficient to attenuate cocaine seeking. However, the neural mechanisms mediating these effects and the role of endogenous central GLP-1 signaling in cocaine seeking remain unknown. Here, we show that voluntary cocaine taking decreased plasma GLP-1 levels in rats and that chemogenetic activation of GLP-1-producing neurons in the nucleus tractus solitarius that project to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) decreased cocaine seeking.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying HIV-associated neurocognitive decline in people living with HIV is frequently complicated by an inability to analyze changes across the course of the infection and frequent presence of comorbid psychiatric and substance use disorders. Preclinical non-human primate simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) models help address these shortcomings. However, SIV studies frequently target protracted endpoints, limiting our understanding of the neuromolecular alterations during the early post-infection window.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Meal variety promotes overconsumption by delaying sensory-specific-satiety (SSS), the transient reduction in reward value of a recently consumed food. Despite its role in meal cessation, the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying SSS are largely unknown.

Methods: Here, we developed a preclinical model of SSS wherein rats consume more of a different food compared to the same food presented again, leading to greater caloric intake.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pain is a dynamic and nonlinear experience shaped by injury and contextual factors, including expectations of future pain or relief. While μ opioid receptors are central to the analgesic effects of opioid drugs, the endogenous opioid neurocircuitry underlying pain and placebo analgesia remains poorly understood. The ventrolateral column of the posterior periaqueductal gray is a critical hub for nociception and endogenous analgesia mediated by opioid signaling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cardio Vascular risk prevention in Germany has a gap between the ages of 20 and 30 years. We established a program for risk group identification in students and analyzed the screenings according to the ACCF/AHA Stages and NYHA functional classification. In a cross-sectional design, 596 participants completed a sports medical and motor performance check-up.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Silicone-in-water emulsions have found widespread use as lubricants, water repellants, softeners, binders, antiblocking agents, antislip agents, and defoamers across a diverse range of markets including textiles, coatings, pharmaceuticals, and home and personal care. Stable incorporation of silicone emulsions into formulated products for these applications can be a challenge. This study seeks to enable formulation by investigating the impact of the degree of ethoxylation of sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES) surfactants on their ability to displace surfactant stabilizer at the silicone-water interfaces of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-in-water emulsion droplets.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neural processing of rewarding stimuli involves several distinct regions, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc). The majority of NAc neurons are GABAergic projection neurons known as medium spiny neurons (MSNs). MSNs are broadly defined by dopamine receptor expression, but evidence suggests that a wider array of subtypes exist.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that causes considerable morbidity, whose risk largely results from genetic factors. Setd1a is a gene implicated in schizophrenia.

Objective: To study the gene expression changes found in heterozygous Setd1a knockout mice in order to gain useful insight into schizophrenia pathogenesis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Preclinical models of addictive drugs have been developed for decades to model aspects of the clinical experience in substance use disorders (SUDs). These include passive exposure as well as volitional intake models across addictive drugs and have been utilized to also measure withdrawal symptomatology and potential neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying relapse to drug seeking or taking. There are a number of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medications for SUDs, however, many demonstrate low clinical efficacy as well as potential sex differences, and we also note gaps in the continuum of care for certain aspects of clinical experiences in individuals who use drugs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Cocaine consumption leads to lower plasma GLP-1 levels in rats, and activating GLP-1-producing neurons can help decrease the urge to relapse.
  • * Research shows that GLP-1 receptors in the VTA are mainly on GABA neurons, and activating these receptors increases GABA neuron activity while reducing dopamine neuron activity, pointing to a new pathway for addressing cocaine relapse.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neural processing of rewarding stimuli involves several distinct regions, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc). The majority of NAc neurons are GABAergic projection neurons known as medium spiny neurons (MSNs). MSNs are broadly defined by dopamine receptor expression, but evidence suggests that a wider array of subtypes exist.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The anterior cingulate cortex plays a pivotal role in the cognitive and affective aspects of pain perception. Both endogenous and exogenous opioid signaling within the cingulate mitigate cortical nociception, reducing pain unpleasantness. However, the specific functional and molecular identities of cells mediating opioid analgesia in the cingulate remain elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The preoptic area of the hypothalamus (POA) is essential for sleep regulation. However, the cellular makeup of the POA is heterogeneous, and the molecular identities of the sleep-promoting cells remain elusive. To address this question, this study compares mice during recovery sleep following sleep deprivation to mice allowed extended sleep.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is essential for assigning positive or negative valence to sensory stimuli. Noxious stimuli that cause pain are encoded by an ensemble of ceptive BLA projection neurons (BLA ensemble). However, the role of the BLA ensemble in mediating behavior changes and the molecular signatures and downstream targets distinguishing this ensemble remain poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The ability to encode and retrieve meal-related information is critical to efficiently guide energy acquisition and consumption, yet the underlying neural processes remain elusive. Here we reveal that ventral hippocampus (HPCv) neuronal activity dynamically elevates during meal consumption and this response is highly predictive of subsequent performance in a foraging-related spatial memory task. Targeted recombination-mediated ablation of HPCv meal-responsive neurons impairs foraging-related spatial memory without influencing food motivation, anxiety-like behavior, or escape-mediated spatial memory.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is traditionally considered an insensitive technique, requiring long acquisition times to measure dilute functionalities on large polymers. With the introduction of cryoprobes and better electronics, sensitivity has improved in a way that allows measurements to take less than 1/20th the time that they previously did. Unfortunately, a high Q-factor with cryoprobes creates baseline curvature related to acoustic ringing that affects quantitative NMR analyses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The high rates of relapse associated with current medications used to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) necessitate research that expands our understanding of the neural mechanisms regulating opioid taking to identify molecular substrates that could be targeted by novel pharmacotherapies to treat OUD. Recent studies show that activation of calcitonin receptors (CTRs) is sufficient to reduce the rewarding effects of addictive drugs in rodents. However, the role of central CTR signaling in opioid-mediated behaviors has not been studied.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Nausea and vomiting remain life-threatening obstacles to successful treatment of chronic diseases, despite a cadre of available antiemetic medications. Our inability to effectively control chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) highlights the need to anatomically, molecularly, and functionally characterize novel neural substrates that block CINV.

Methods: Behavioral pharmacology assays of nausea and emesis in 3 different mammalian species were combined with histological and unbiased transcriptomic analyses to investigate the beneficial effects of glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor (GIPR) agonism on CINV.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The g-protein coupled receptor GPR-160, recently identified as a putative receptor for the cocaine and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) peptide, shows abundant expression in the energy-balance control nuclei, including the dorsal vagal complex (DVC). However, its physiological role in the control of food intake has yet to be fully explored. Here, we performed a virally mediated, targeted knockdown (KD) of in the DVC of male rats to evaluate its physiological role in control of feeding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Student burnout has become a health concern in higher education systems. Its prevalence rates are high due to specific demands in this life situation. It leads not only to increased academic dropout rates but is also associated with negative health outcomes both physically and mentally.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cancer metastasis to the brain is a significant clinical problem. Metastasis is the consequence of favorable interactions between invaded cancer cells and the microenvironment. Here, we demonstrate that cancer-activated astrocytes create a sustained low-level activated type I interferon (IFN) microenvironment in brain metastatic lesions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The development of single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptome technologies is enabling the unraveling of the molecular and cellular heterogeneity of psychiatric disorders. The complexity of the brain and the relationships between different brain regions can be better understood through the classification of individual cell populations based on their molecular markers and transcriptomic features. Analysis of these unique cell types can explain their involvement in the pathology of psychiatric disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: 5XFAD humanized mutant mice and Trem2 knockout (T2KO) mice are two mouse models relevant to the study of Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related pathology.

Objective: To determine hippocampal transcriptomic and polyadenylation site usage alterations caused by genetic mutations engineered in 5XFAD and T2KO mice.

Methods: Employing a publicly available single-nucleus RNA sequencing dataset, we used Seurat and Sierra analytic programs to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differential transcript usage (DTU), respectively, in hippocampal cell types from each of the two mouse models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Opioid exposure is known to cause transcriptomic changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). However, no studies to date have investigated cell type-specific transcriptomic changes associated with volitional opioid taking. Here, we use single nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNAseq) to comprehensively characterize cell type-specific alterations of the NAc transcriptome in rats self-administering morphine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF