Topic: donepezil

Striatal cholinergic interneurons (SCINs) are implicated in several pathologies involving the basal ganglia, including motor and neuropsychiatric disorders. They are key modulators of striatal circuit function at both pre- and postsynaptic level, regulating corticostriatal synaptic transmission/plasticity and striatal neuron excitability. We have recently characterized a mouse model of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) obtained by the targeted deletion of the ASD-linked Tshz3 gene in cholinergic neurons (Chat-cKO): these mice show repetitive and restricted behaviors (RRBs) paralleled by a signifi

The delayed non-match to position task (DNMTP) is a translational instrumental learning paradigm commonly applied preclinically to assess higher executive functions including attention and working memory in rats. In this study, the effects of acute inflammatory challenges were assessed on cognitive performance in the DNMTP task.. Male and female Wistar rats were trained to criteria on the task. Initially, in validating the test, the effect of treatment with the muscarinic receptor antagonist scopolamine (0.02mg/kg, s.c.), known to disrupt performance in the task, was confirmed. Sex differences

Neural 3D organoids from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are a rapidly developing technology with great potential for understanding brain development and neuronal diseases. A promising parallel approach is assembling structures similar to 3D spheroids or “neurospheres” by using defined combinations of fully differentiated human iPSC-derived cells in tri-culture, including glutamatergic neurons, GABAergic neurons, and astrocytes. In this study, we chose to model Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) by incorporating allelic variants of the ApoE gene (2/2, 3/4, and 4/4) to create disease-specific

The involvement of the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) in digestive and neurological disorders is widely recognized and constitutes a novel target for diagnostic biomarkers and therapies. For example, Parkinson’s disease patients are now stratified according to gut-first or brain-first patterns that diverge in symptom progression. However, large-scale characterization of this neuronal network is often limited to local sampling that cannot reflect network dynamics. We present a new method for minimally invasive in-vivo intraluminal investigation of electrophysiological activity from the entire dis