Fear conditioning modulates the intrinsic excitability of ventral hippocampal CA1 neurons in male rats.

The hippocampus has a known role in learning and memory, with the ventral subregion supporting many learning tasks involving affective responding, including fear conditioning. Altered neuronal intrinsic excitability reflects experience-dependent plasticity that supports learning-related behavioral changes. Such changes have previously been observed in the dorsal hippocampus following fear conditioning, but little work has examined the effect of fear conditioning on ventral hippocampal intrinsic plasticity.

Sickle cell disease iPSC-derived sensory neurons exhibit increased excitability and sensitization to patient plasma.

Individuals living with sickle cell disease (SCD) experience severe recurrent acute and chronic pain. Challenges to gaining mechanistic insight into pathogenic SCD pain processes include differential gene expression and function of sensory neurons between humans and mice with SCD, and extremely limited availability of neuronal tissues from patients with SCD. Here, we used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), derived from patients with SCD, differentiated into sensory neurons (SCD iSNs) to begin to overcome these challenges.

Synaptic and intrinsic plasticity within overlapping lateral amygdala ensembles following fear conditioning.

Introduction: New learning results in modulation of intrinsic plasticity in the underlying brain regions. Such changes in intrinsic plasticity can influence allocation and encoding of future memories such that new memories encoded during the period of enhanced excitability are linked to the original memory. The temporal window during which the two memories interact depends upon the time course of intrinsic plasticity following new learning.

Schwann cell release of p11 induces sensory neuron hyperactivity in Fabry disease.

Patients with Fabry disease suffer from chronic debilitating pain and peripheral sensory neuropathy with minimal treatment options, but the cellular drivers of this pain are unknown. Here, we propose a novel mechanism by which altered signaling between Schwann cells and sensory neurons underlies the peripheral sensory nerve dysfunction we observe in a genetic rat model of Fabry disease. Using and electrophysiological recordings, we demonstrate that Fabry rat sensory neurons exhibit pronounced hyperexcitability.