Neurological and psychological constructs in Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly.

Excepting "Green Tea" and "Carmilla," Sheridan Le Fanu's fiction is generally neglected by modern-day readers, yet his work reveals much information about the conduct of life in nineteenth century Ireland and England. Le Fanu's works should be appreciated for the insights he provides into the psychology of his characters; his fiction was written prior to what historians of psychology date as the formal establishment of the discipline in 1879, which occurred after his death. His fiction also illustrates the emerging medical specialty of neurology, although Le Fanu's later writings are more illustrative of his interest in the mystical works of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: exploring neuroscience, nature, and nurture in the novel and the films.

The story of Victor Frankenstein's quest to conquer death produced a legacy that has endured for almost 200 years. Powerful in its condemnation of the scientist's quest to achieve knowledge at any cost, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most enduring novels of all time. It has never been out of print and has been translated to both stage and screen many times since its "birth.

Brain, mind, and body: interactions with art in renaissance Italy.

The Renaissance saw the first systematic anatomical and physiological studies of the brain and human body because scientists, for the first time in centuries, were allowed to dissect human bodies for study. Renaissance artists were frequently found at dissections and their attention to detail can be observed in their products. Scientists themselves were increasingly artistic, and they created astonishing anatomical models and illustrations that can still be studied.

Experimental confirmation by Sir Victor Horsley of the relationship between thyroid gland dysfunction and myxedema.

Whereas Sir Victor Horsley is well known for his many contributions to neurosurgery, this is not the case for his treatments for both myxedema and cretinism. Horsley's research on thyroid physiology was concentrated in the years 1884-1890, while he was director of the Brown Institute for Animals. Based upon experimentation with dogs and monkeys as well as some human patients, Horsley demonstrated conclusively that removal of the thyroid gland produced tremors, rigidity, and paralysis, which he attributed to changes in lower motor centers.

Relationships between spatial activities and scores on the mental rotation test as a function of sex.

Previous results suggested that female college students' scores on the Mental Rotations Test might be related to their prior experience with spatial tasks. For example, women who played video games scored better on the test than their non-game-playing peers, whereas playing video games was not related to men's scores. The present study examined whether participation in different types of spatial activities would be related to women's performance on the Mental Rotations Test.

Relationships among alcohol consumption, drug use, and goal orientation among college students in the southeastern USA.

Students attending 2 different universities completed a Goals Inventory as well as a self-report survey designed to address their use of alcohol and other drugs. University 1 was a large, public state-supported school that did not restrict alcohol use. From this university were 30 male and 77 female students who ranged in age from 18-25 years (M = 20 yr.

Rats more readily acquire a time-of-day go no-go discrimination than a time-of-day choice discrimination.

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were used to compare six time-place training procedures that differed with respect to housing or training conditions. All procedures involved training food-deprived rats to enter one choice arm of a T-maze during a morning test session and to enter the other choice arm during an afternoon session to obtain Cocoa Puffs(R). The task proved to be difficult.

Breakfast in the nook and dinner in the dining room: time-of-day discrimination in rats.

Four studies were conducted which demonstrate that most (63%) male Sprague-Dawley rats can attain criterion, nine correct choices over ten consecutive trials, on a time-of-day discrimination in an elevated T-maze, but that the task is relatively difficult. The discrimination required that the rats go to one goal arm during a morning session and the other in an afternoon session. The sessions always began at the same time and were at least 6 h apart.

Fibers immunoreactive for nerve growth factor receptor in adult rat cortex and hippocampus mimic the innervation pattern of AChE-positive fibers.

Numerous reports have indicated that nerve growth factor (NGF) exerts neurotrophic effects on the cholinergic neurons of the basal forebrain. Receptors for NGF (NGFR) have been demonstrated on cholinergic perikarya in the medial septum, diagonal band of Broca, and basal nucleus of Meynert. These neurons provide the major cholinergic innervation to the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, and previous studies have shown that their terminal plexuses also possess NGFR.

Fate of septohippocampal neurons following intracerebroventricular injections of colchicine.

Injection of colchicine into the lateral ventricles (ICV) of rats results in a selective loss of neurons immunoreactive for choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) in the medial septum (MS) and a concomitant loss of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) positive fibers in the hippocampus. To determine if this loss of cholinergic cells is due to neuronal death, septohippocampal neurons were retrogradely labeled with fluoro-gold (FG) 1 week prior to the injection of colchicine. Numbers and sizes of FG-labeled and ChAT-immunoreactive neurons were assessed 3, 6, and 10 weeks after ICV colchicine.

Studies related to the use of colchicine as a neurotoxin in the septohippocampal cholinergic system.

Colchicine has been shown to be neurotoxic to cholinergic neurons in the medial septum 1 week following intracerebroventricular injections. The experiments described here were designed to examine the selectivity of this effect over a longer time course, and to examine the role of axoplasmic transport in the neurotoxic effect. As previously reported, 1 week after intracerebroventricular injections of colchicine, the numbers of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT)-immunoreactive neurons in the medial septum-diagonal band complex (MSDB) were reduced to 38% of control; this reduction was stable 2 and 3 weeks post injection.

Nucleus basalis lesions attenuate acquisition, but not retention, of Pavlovian heart rate conditioning and have no effect on eyeblink conditioning.

Rabbits with lesions of the anterior nucleus basalis of Meynert (nBM) were compared with animals with sham lesions or unoperated control animals on a classical conditioning task in which heart rate (HR) and eyeblink (EB) conditioned responses (CRs) were assessed. The nBM lesions impaired the magnitude of the decelerative HR CR, but had no effect on the EB CR. A second experiment, in which animals were lesioned after acquisition was complete, showed that anterior nBM lesions had no effect on retention of either the HR or EB CR.

Colchicine-induced cholinergic denervation of the hippocampus elicits sympathetic ingrowth.

Sympathetic neurons from the peripheral nervous system invade the hippocampus following destruction of its septal inputs. It is thought that sympathetic ingrowth is due to the loss of cholinergic innervation since damage to the medial septum-diagonal band complex (MSDB) or its major efferent bundle, the fimbria-fornix, is required to induce ingrowth. The MSDB provides the major source of cholinergic fibers projecting to the hippocampus; however, non-cholinergic (e.

Classically conditioned cardiac responses in "old" and "young" Fischer 344 rats.

Male and female Fischer 344 rats, 12 or 26-28 months of age, received two sessions of Pavlovian heart rate conditioning, and were compared with same-sex and same-age controls receiving unpaired presentations of the tone conditional stimulus (CS) and the shock unconditional stimulus (US). Older rats of both sexes demonstrated slower acquisition of the heart rate (HR) conditioned response (CR), and smaller magnitude changes than did the younger animals. Control experiments in 6-, 12-, 24-, and 30-month-old animals indicated that these differences were not due to an impaired sensitivity to the CS or US in the older animals.

Pizotifen (BC-105) attenuates orienting and Pavlovian heart rate conditioning in rabbits.

The cardiac component of the orienting reflex (OR) was elicited in rabbits by 75 dB, 4-sec duration tones of either 304 or 1216 Hz. The conditioned cardiac response was also studied using the same tones and paraorbital electric shock as conditioned and unconditioned stimuli, respectively, using a differential Pavlovian conditioning paradigm. Subcutaneous injections of the central 5-HT antagonist pizotifen (BC-105), the peripheral 5-HT antagonist xylamidine, the central 5-HT agonist d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and LSD in conjunction with BC-105 were administered 15 min prior to behavioral assessment.

Antagonism of the LSD cue by putative serotonin antagonists: relationship to inhibition of in vivo [3H]spiroperidol binding.

In two groups of rats trained to discriminate 0.08 or 0.16 mg/kg of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from saline, pirenperone and ketanserin completely blocked the stimulus effect of LSD.

Concomitant Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and leg flexion responses in the rat.

Pavlovian conditioning was studied in male Fischer 344 rats using tones as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and footshock as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Different groups of animals received (a) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 0.5 sec CS, (b) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 4.