Chronic Ultrasound Prenatal Stress Altered the Brain's Neurochemical Systems in Newborn Rats.

Prenatal stress (PS) affects the development and functioning of the central nervous system, but the exact mechanisms underpinning this effect have not been pinpointed yet. A promising model of PS is one based on chronic exposure of pregnant rodents to variable-frequency ultrasound (US PS), as it mimics the PS with a psychic nature that most adequately captures the human stressors in modern society. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of US PS on the brain neurotransmitter, neuropeptide, and neurotrophic systems of newborn Wistar rats.

Association of GAD1 gene polymorphism rs3749034 with the information processing and cognitive event-related potentials in schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects.

Objective: Glutamic acid decarboxylase, an enzyme in GABA biosynthesis, is encoded by the GAD1 gene, the transcriptional activity of which is affected by the rs3749034 polymorphism. The aim was to investigate the effects of rs3749034 on cognitive event-related potentials (P300) in healthy subjects and schizophrenic patients.

Methods: Determination of rs3749034 polymorphism was performed in 89 healthy volunteers and 109 schizophrenic patients (males).

Ultrasound-Induced Prenatal Stress: New Possibilities for Modeling Mental Disorders.

The development of animal models of mental disorders is an important task since such models are useful for studying the neurobiological mechanisms of psychopathologies and for trial of new therapeutic drugs. One way to model pathologies of the nervous system is to impair fetal neurodevelopment through stress of the pregnant future mother, or prenatal stress (PS). The use of variable frequency ultrasound (US) in rodents is a promising method of imitating psychological stress, to which women in modern society are most often subjected.

Effects of Maternal Separation and Subsequent Stress on Behaviors and Brain Monoamines in Rats.

Childhood adversity can induce maladaptive behaviors and increase risk for affective disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders, and vulnerability to stress in adulthood. Deprivation of maternal care interrupts brain development through the disturbance of various neurotransmitters, however, the details remain unclear. The features of the symptoms of disorders are largely determined by early stress protocol, genetic characteristics (line), and the sex of the animals.

Formation of Different Strategies of Competitive Foraging Behavior in Rats.

We studied competitive interactions of rats during instrumental foraging behavior. Two groups of animals were revealed: rats with predominance of operant actions for getting food reinforcements (donors) and kleptoparasites that more often get food after instrumental acts of the partners. Intergroup differences began to appear and increased from 3-4 paired experiments.

The power of innate: Behavioural attachment and neural activity in responses to natural and artificial objects in filial imprinting in chicks.

Newly hatched domestic chicks are known to orient preferentially toward naturalistic stimuli, resembling a conspecific. Here, we examined to what extent this behavioral preference can be transcended by an artificial imprinting stimulus in both short-term and long-term tests. We also compared the expression maps of the plasticity-associated gene in the brains of chicks imprinted to naturalistic (rotating stuffed jungle fowl) and artificial (rotating illuminated red box) stimuli.

Mild cognitive impairment is associated with low copy number of ribosomal genes in the genomes of elderly people.

: Mild cognitive impairments (MCI) accompanying aging are associated with oxidative stress. The ability of cells to respond to stress is determined by the protein synthesis level, which depends on the ribosomes number. Ribosomal deficit was documented in MCI.

DNA methylation inhibition participates in the anterograde amnesia key mechanism through the suppression of the transcription of genes involved in memory formation in grape snails.

The study of the amnesia mechanisms is of both theoretical and practical importance. The mechanisms of anterograde amnesia are the least studied, due to the lack of an experimental model that allows studying this amnesia type molecular and cellular mechanisms. Previously, we found that conditional food aversion memory reconsolidation impairment in snails by NMDA glutamate receptor antagonists led to the amnesia induction, in the late stages of which (>10 days) repeated training did not cause long-term memory formation.

Cholinergic Internal and Projection Systems of Hippocampus and Neocortex Critical for Early Spatial Memory Consolidation in Normal and Chronic Cerebral Hypoperfusion Conditions in Rats with Different Abilities to Consolidation: The Role of Cholinergic Interneurons of the Hippocampus.

The role of cholinergic projection systems of the neocortex and hippocampus in memory consolidation in healthy and neuropathological conditions has been subject to intensive research. On the contrary, the significance of cholinergic cortical and hippocampal interneurons in learning has hardly been studied. We aimed to evaluate the role of both cholinergic projection neurons and interneurons of the neocortex and hippocampus at an early stage of spatial memory consolidation (2s1) in normal and chronic brain hypoperfusion conditions.

Comparative Analysis of Dopaminergic and Cholinergic Mechanisms of Sensory and Sensorimotor Gating in Healthy Individuals and in Patients With Schizophrenia.

Sensory and sensorimotor gating provide the early processing of information under conditions of rapid presentation of multiple stimuli. Gating deficiency is observed in various psychopathologies, in particular, in schizophrenia. However, there is also a significant proportion of people in the general population with low filtration rates who do not show any noticeable cognitive decline.

Technologies for large-scale mapping of functional neural circuits active during a user-defined time window.

The mapping of neural circuits activated during behavior down to individual neurons is crucial for decoding how the brain processes information. Technologies allowing activity-dependent labeling of neurons during user-defined restricted time windows are rapidly developing. Precise marking of the time window with light, in addition to chemicals, is now possible.

Spatiotemporal 3D image registration for mesoscale studies of brain development.

Comparison of brain samples representing different developmental stages often necessitates registering the samples to common coordinates. Although the available software tools are successful in registering 3D images of adult brains, registration of perinatal brains remains challenging due to rapid growth-dependent morphological changes and variations in developmental pace between animals. To address these challenges, we introduce CORGI (Customizable Object Registration for Groups of Images), an algorithm for the registration of perinatal brains.

The Psychoemotional Stress-Induced Changes in the Abundance of SatIII (1q12) and Telomere Repeats, but Not Ribosomal DNA, in Human Leukocytes.

Introduction: As shown earlier, copy number variations (CNV) in the human satellite III (1q12) fragment (f-SatIII) and the telomere repeat (TR) reflects the cell's response to oxidative stress. The contents of f-SatIII and TR in schizophrenic (SZ) patients were found to be lower than in healthy controls (HC) in previous studies. The major question of this study was: 'What are the f-SatIII and TR CNV dynamic changes in human leukocytes, depending on psychoemotional stress?'

Materials And Methods: We chose a model of psychoemotional stress experienced by second-year medical students during their exams.

Calcium Imaging Reveals Fast Tuning Dynamics of Hippocampal Place Cells and CA1 Population Activity during Free Exploration Task in Mice.

Hippocampal place cells are a well-known object in neuroscience, but their place field formation in the first moments of navigating in a novel environment remains an ill-defined process. To address these dynamics, we performed in vivo imaging of neuronal activity in the CA1 field of the mouse hippocampus using genetically encoded green calcium indicators, including the novel NCaMP7 and FGCaMP7, designed specifically for in vivo calcium imaging. Mice were injected with a viral vector encoding calcium sensor, head-mounted with an NVista HD miniscope, and allowed to explore a completely novel environment (circular track surrounded by visual cues) without any reinforcement stimuli, in order to avoid potential interference from reward-related behavior.

Impaired function of rDNA transcription initiation machinery leads to derepression of ribosomal genes with insertions of R2 retrotransposon.

Eukaryotic genomes harbor hundreds of rRNA genes, many of which are transcriptionally silent. However, little is known about selective regulation of individual rDNA units. In Drosophila melanogaster, some rDNA repeats contain insertions of the R2 retrotransposon, which is capable to be transcribed only as part of pre-rRNA molecules.

Effect of Intrahippocampal Administration of α7 Subtype Nicotinic Receptor Agonist PNU-282987 and Its Solvent Dimethyl Sulfoxide on the Efficiency of Hypoxic Preconditioning in Rats.

We have previously suggested a key role of the hippocampus in the preconditioning action of moderate hypobaric hypoxia (HBH). The preconditioning efficiency of HBH is associated with acoustic startle prepulse inhibition (PPI). In rats with PPI > 40%, HBH activates the cholinergic projections of hippocampus, and PNU-282987, a selective agonist of α7 nicotinic receptors (α7nAChRs), reduces the HBH efficiency and potentiating effect on HBH of its solvent dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO, anticholinesterase agent) when administered intraperitoneally.

Evaluation of the Activity of Choline Acetyltransferase From Different Synaptosomal Fractions at the Distinct Stages of Spatial Learning in the Morris Water Maze.

Accumulated data have evidenced that brain cholinergic circuits play a crucial role in learning and memory; however, our knowledge about the participation of neocortical and hippocampal cholinergic systems in spatial learning needs to be refined. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of the activity of membrane-bound and soluble choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) in the synaptosomal sub-fractions of the neocortex and hippocampus with performance of the spatial navigation task in the Morris water maze at different temporal stages of memory trace formation. To identify distinct stages of memory formation, rats were trained using a 5-day protocol with four trials per day.

Imaging of C-fos Activity in Neurons of the Mouse Parietal Association Cortex during Acquisition and Retrieval of Associative Fear Memory.

The parietal cortex of rodents participates in sensory and spatial processing, movement planning, and decision-making, but much less is known about its role in associative learning and memory formation. The present study aims to examine the involvement of the parietal association cortex (PtA) in associative fear memory acquisition and retrieval in mice. Using ex vivo c-Fos immunohistochemical mapping and in vivo Fos-EGFP two-photon imaging, we show that PtA neurons were specifically activated both during acquisition and retrieval of cued fear memory.

Protein synthesis inhibitor administration before a reminder caused recovery from amnesia induced by memory reconsolidation impairment with NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist.

Memory recovery in amnestic animals is one of the most poorly studied processes. In this paper, we examine the role of protein synthesis and a reminder in the mechanisms of amnesia and memory recovery in grape snails trained to conditioned food aversion. Amnesia was induced by the impairment of memory reconsolidation using NMDA (N-methyl d-aspartate) glutamate receptor antagonists.

Terahertz dielectric spectroscopy of human brain gliomas and intact tissues : double-Debye and double-overdamped-oscillator models of dielectric response.

Terahertz (THz) technology offers novel opportunities in the intraoperative neurodiagnosis. Recently, the significant progress was achieved in the study of brain gliomas and intact tissues, highlighting a potential for THz technology in the intraoperative delineation of tumor margins. However, a lack of physical models describing the THz dielectric permittivity of healthy and pathological brain tissues restrains the further progress in this field.

Mesenchymal Stem Cells Early Response to Low-Dose Ionizing Radiation.

Introduction: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are applied as the therapeutic agents, e.g., in the tumor radiation therapy.

Opposite Pathways of Cholinergic Mechanisms of Hypoxic Preconditioning in the Hippocampus: Participation of Nicotinic α7 Receptors and Their Association with the Baseline Level of Startle Prepulse Inhibition.

(1) Background. A one-time moderate hypobaric hypoxia (HBH) has a preconditioning effect whose neuronal mechanisms are not studied well. Previously, we found a stable correlation between the HBH efficiency and acoustic startle prepulse inhibition (PPI).

Identification of different cell clusters in the endothelium of atherosclerotic vessels and determination of inter-cluster gradient of proliferative and inflammatory activity as new diagnostic markers.

To characterize atherogenesis functionally, we studied the functional heterogeneity of endotheliocytes in carotid vessels with atherosclerotic plaques and identified several distinct cell clusters. We measured the Ki-67 labeling index (Ki-67 LI), percentage of Bcl-2 cells (CP) and expression of CCL5, IL 6 and VCAM1 in each cell cluster. We also investigated how these indicators change when the plaque becomes unstable and how they affect the risk of adverse cerebrovascular events in patients.