Neuropharmacology ePosters

Psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine have shown great potential in treating psychiatric disorders, often producing long-lasting effects after a single dose, yet their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Since one of the most consistent features of the psychedelic experience is the alteration in…

Psychedelic compounds act upon the serotonergic pathway to generate altered states of consciousness and disrupt normal sensory processing, creating profound perceptual disturbances including visual hallucinations. While psychedelics have recently garnered much attention for their cognitive and therapeutic effects, how…

Anxiety disorders are marked by intense and chronic worrying along other symptoms, including an attentional bias towards negative valence. Preclinical models have linked the activity of the anterior insular cortex (or insula) to both anxiety and negative valence[1]. We recently showed an increased dopamine release…

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder known for its positive symptoms: delusions and hallucinations. However, the impact of schizophrenia on function is mostly due to its executive dysfunction. Mechanistically, it is known that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is dysfunctional in this disorder and that there is a general…

Dopamine plays a crucial role in the neural mechanisms underlying behavior, yet quantifying its impact through genetic modifications presents significant challenges, particularly due to the high-dimensional nature of the resulting data. In this study, we address these challenges by proposing a novel methodological…

Psychedelics (5-HT2AR agonists) show great promise in treating mental disorders but their effects on neuronal population activity are not clear. Latent dimensions identified by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) capture the dynamics of this interrelated neuronal population activity. We asked whether latent dimensions…

Brain rhythms in the alpha frequency range [8Hz-12Hz] are present in idling conditions and sleep. They have also an important role in cognition, e.g. they modulate activity of task-irrelevant neural populations, and enhances selective attention among others. A prominent occipital alpha wave emerges in mammals when the…

Migraine is a recurrent headache disorder characterized by episodes of acute pain. The overall objective of this work, was to test the hypothesis that the NLRP3 inflammasome is involved in the pathophysiology of migraine and that NLRP3 blockade may represent a novel strategy for migraine management through the design…

The inability to extinguish learned fear is a hallmark of trauma and stress-related disorders. The inhibitory learning fear extinction is an effective way to treat these disorders, however, the neurobiology of fear extinction has not been clarified. The Neuropeptide S (NPS) has been shown to promote arousal and…

The striatum is densely innervated by midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons but also receives a further sparse monoaminergic innervation by raphe serotonin (5-HT) neurons. Striatal 5-HT has been suggested to have some opposing functions to DA but also to regulate DA release which might support (or counteract) this functional…

Lead (Pb), a ubiquitous, non-biodegradable heavy metal contaminant, has significant impact on human and animal health. The adverse effect of lead on avian health and productivity has received little attention, considering the fact that they are sentinels. Alchornea laxiflora (Benth), family Euphorbiaceae, grows…

Dementia, a complex, incurable clinical syndrome marked by progressive cognitive decline, encompasses various types, with Alzheimer's disease (AD) being the most prevalent. The annual increase in AD cases underscores the urgency for innovative antidementia treatments. Mansorin A (MA) and mansonone G (MG) exhibit…

The hippocampal mossy fiber bouton to CA3 pyramidal neuron (MFB-PN) synapse has an important role in information processing and storage, whose efficacy is under profound modulation. Activation of presynaptic GABAB receptors (GABABRs) reduces extracellularly evoked EPSC amplitudes and mediates heterosynaptic depression…

Oxidative stress and neuroinflammation are crucial phenomena in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease (AD). Oxotremorine-M (Oxo), a non-selective muscarinic acetylcholine receptors agonist, exerts neurotrophic functions in primary neurons and modulates oxidative stress and neuroinflammation phenomena in rat brain.…

Dopamine-dependent cyclic AMP accumulation occurs via activation of D1-like receptors since early development of the chicken retina. Cyclic AMP is an ubiquitous second messenger that regulates several physiological processes including neuronal survival and differentiation. The mTOR pathway is a crucial pathway linking…

Introduction: Neurotrypsin (NT) is a neuronal trypsin-like serine protease whose mutations cause severe mental retardation in humans. NT is activated in vitro by Hebbian-like conjunction of pre- and postsynaptic activities, which promote the formation of dendritic filopodia via proteolytic cleavage of the proteoglycan…

A link between type 2 diabetes mellitus and neurodegeneration has been suggested for decades. Diabetes-associated cognitive dysfunction has been linked to chronic hyperglycemia, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, cholinergic dysfunction, and neuronal degeneration. We investigated the neuroprotective activity of a…

Aim: Spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers inflammatory response by activation and accumulation radical oxygen species (ROS). Cell therapy has no effective long term recovery outcomes due to presence of ROS in lesion site increase the death rate of transplanted cells.One efficient approach to address this issue is adding…

N-acetyl spermine (NASPM) is known from in vitro and in vivo animal models for its action as calcium permeable AMPA receptors (CP-AMPARs) antagonist. Our study aim to investigate the impact of NASPM on an ex vivo human brain slice neocortex model, focusing on its ability to suppress epileptic activity. While AMPA…

Hyperlipidemia is a risk factor for developing atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative disorders, however the underlying molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Protein Kinase R-like Endoplasmic Reticulum Kinase (PERK) signaling is one of the molecular pathways thought to be involved in hyperlipidemia-driven…

Dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra are vital for the control of movement. This fundamental function is encoded by the output signal of DA neurons which switches from spontaneous firing to bursts of action potentials. The latter produces an increase of DA release in targeted areas which is associated to…

Gut microbiome has strongly emerged as a pivotal factor in the pathogenesis of stroke via gut-brain axis. However, it remains uncertain whether interventions that modulate gut microbiome can constitute a potent strategy to improve stroke outcome. The present study was carried out to explore interventions that affect…

It is challenging to create chemical-induced models of Alzheimer’s disease without using genetically bred animals. Intracerebroventricular (ICV) streptozocin (STZ) administration at a sub-diabetogenic dose can serve as a viable model for cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease via a disruption of…

Estrogen is a neurosteroid with protective and regenerative properties. Nerve growth factor differentiated PC12 neuronal cells have been shown to express both nuclear estrogen receptor ER alpha (genomic) and membrane estrogen receptor GPER (non-genomic), thus our aim is to differentiate which cellular pathways are…