A mouse model for adolescent alcohol abuse: stunted growth and effects in brain.

Background: Adolescent alcohol abuse remains a serious public health concern, with nearly a third of high school seniors reporting heavy drinking in the previous month.

Methods: Using the high ethanol-consuming C57BL/6J mouse strain, we examined the effects of ethanol (3.75 g/kg, IP, daily for 45 days) on body weight and brain region mass (cerebral cortex, cerebellum, corpus callosum) during peri-adolescence (postnatal day [P]25 to 70) or adulthood (P180 to 225) of both males and females.

Ethanol inhibits the sensory responses of cerebellar granule cells in anesthetized cats.

Background: Granule cells occupy a strategic position in the transmission of afferent information to the cerebellar cortex. They are also the most abundant type of neurons in the cerebellum. The functions of the cerebellum are thought to be sensitive to acute alcohol intoxication.

Information coding capacity of cerebellar parallel fibers.

Understanding synaptic connectivity is a prerequisite to gaining insight on how the central nervous system processes information. Cerebellar parallel fibers make an impressive number of synapses with the Purkinje cells. These synapses are the major structural elements of a large information processing system.

Cerebellar granule cell: ascending axon and parallel fiber.

Morphometric data have indicated that most (> 95%) of the granule cell axonal synapses are located along the parallel fibers. The ascending axons of granule cells, however, exert powerful excitatory effects on the activities of Purkinje cells. To resolve this apparent conflict, we propose that some of the parallel fiber synapses overlying a functionally homogeneous granule cell patch can discharge in close synchrony with the ascending axon synapses from that same granule cell patch, thereby augmenting the excitatory action from ascending axons.

The mouse cerebellum from 1 to 34 months: parallel fibers.

Synaptic losses are critical events in the aging brain. In the cerebellum, synapses between the parallel fibers and Purkinje cells are strategic elements of its neuronal circuitry. We have examined the number of synaptic varicosities per parallel fiber in the anterior lobe of the cerebellum in young (1, 2.

An experimental method for measuring the mean length of cerebellar parallel fibers: validation and derivation of a correction factor by computational simulation and probability analysis.

The length of cerebellar parallel fibers is important for information integration by the Purkinje cells. Based on the Copernican principle for analyzing the length of stochastic events, we have recently devised a stochastic method to estimate the mean length of parallel fibers within a given cerebellar region. The purpose of the present report is to provide validation of this methodology via computational simulations.