Topic: cholinergic basal forebrain

Cholinergic activity is thought to play an important role in learning and the control of brain state. Multiple studies have shown that pairing external phasic stimulation of the cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF) with a sensory stimulus drives long-lasting sensory cortical plasticity, implicating the CBF as a potential substrate for associative learning. For this to be ecologically valid, we hypothesized that CBF projections to the sensory cortex should exhibit phasic signaling that is temporally-synchronous with sensory-evoked responses in cortical neurons. Intrinsic sensory-evoked responses h

Olfactory dysfunction is a common aspect of normal aging. It is also an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The olfactory bulb, the first processing station of olfactory information in the brain, receives cholinergic basal forebrain input, as does the neocortex and hippocampus contributing cognition and memory, respectively. This study aimed to clarify (1) the role of cholinergic input to the olfactory bulb in adult and aged rats, (2) the relationship between olfaction and cognitive function in older adults.In both adult and aged rats, under anesthesia, unilateral olfactory nerve stimul