Neuropharmacology
Chapters
page 1 of 5 pages | next »A Comparison of Visual Analog Scale and Categorical Ratings in Assessing the Patient’s Estimate of Sleep Quality
N. Zisapel, R. Tarrasch and M. Laudon
Visual analog scales (VAS) and diary cards are used to measure changes in patients’ sleep quality in clinical trials and practice. In this study we compared the 2 methods for assessing changes in sleep quality in patients with insomnia.
Acetylcholine: I. Muscarinic Receptors
Giancarlo Pepeu and Maria Grazia Giovannini
The study of brain muscarinic receptors began more than a century ago, long before the existence of muscarinic receptors was postulated and then demonstrated. However, the effects of drugs acting on these receptors, such as atropine, eserine, pilocarpine and arecoline had been studied much earlie...
Acetylcholine: II. Nicotinic Receptors
Joyce Besheer and Rick A. Bevins
The nicotinic cholinergic system has been widely implicated in mediating learning and/or memory processes in human and nonhuman animals. This chapter highlights various areas of basic research in which stimulation or blockade of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) has been shown to affect ...
Adenosine and Purines
Trevor W. Stone, M-R. Nikbakht and E. Martin O’Kane
Adenosine can act on four subtypes of receptor, of which the A1 and A2A subtypes have received the most attention experimentally. The A1 receptors are primarily inhibitory by depressing transmitter release or causing hyperpolarisation, while the A2A receptors often cause overall excitation by dir...
Adenylyl Cyclases
Nicole Mons and Jean-Louis Guillou
Although a number of signal transduction pathways have been implicated in short- and long-term adaptative changes in neuronal plasticity and memory formation, there is increasing evidence that cross-talk between the cAMP- and Ca2+-regulatory pathways may play a pivotal role in learning and mem...
Adrenaline and Noradrenaline
Marie E. Gibbs and Roger J. Summers
Noradrenaline released in the brain can potentially act on any of 9 different receptor subtypes and since activation of the different receptors produces quite different effects both in duration and time-course of memory, noradrenaline can produce very complicated behavioral responses. Using a mod...
Aging and the Calcium Homeostasis
Wendy W. Wu and John F. Disterhoft
Normal brain aging is associated with physiological alterations in Ca2+ homeostasis and deficits in learning and memory. The hippocampus, a structure critical for proper learning and memory functions, is frequently implicated in aging-related learning deficits. Consistent with the “Ca2+ hypothesi...
Animal and Human Amnesia: The Cholinergic Hypothesis Revisited
Robert Jaffard and Aline Marighetto
The net effect of an experimentally-induced or “naturally” occurring alteration in learning and memory is generally determined by the type of neurological dysfunction (from focal lesions to gene expression) and/or the nature of the learning task. Accordingly, memory systems are defined as distinc...
Antipsychotic Drugs in Schizophrenia Patients
Monti and Daniel Monti
Insomnia is a common feature in schizophrenia. The sleep disturbance of either never-medicated or previously treated schizophrenia patients is characterized by an increase of stage 2 sleep latency and wake time after sleep onset, and a reduction of total sleep time and sleep efficiency. In addit...
Benzodiazepines for Sedation in Infants and Children
Eugene Ng and Vibhuti Shah
Benzodiazepines are commonly used to provide sedation for infants and children undergoing intensive care or di agnostic and therapeutic procedures in a variety of clinical settings. This chapter focuses on Midazolam as representative of this class of drug. Midazolam provides sedation by altering...
Calcium
Miao-Kun Sun and Daniel L. Alkon
Ca2+ plays an essential role in a variety of intracellular signaling cascades, which under- lie mechanisms essential for the dynamic control of cell functions. In cognition, Ca2+ participates in control of not only the formation and development of neural structures that cognition depends on, bu...
CaMKinase II
Martin Cammarota and Jorge H. Medina
The modification of synaptic properties by means of protein phosphorylation has been, for long, recognized as a core and unifying principle in the study of the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation and storage of new memories. The intrinsically transient nature of this posttranslational m...
Cannabinoid Receptors and Signal Transduction
Allyn C. Howlett and Joong-Youn Shim
The cannabinoid receptors are members of the rhodopsin-like family of 7-transmem- brane spanning receptors that are believed to bind their agonist ligands within the central core formed by the interaction of the seven transmembrane helices. Cannabinoid receptors are associated with G proteins o...
Cannabinoids
Lianne Robinson, Bettina Platt and Gernot Riedel
Despite its long tradition in human psychopharmacology, animal studies on the effect of marijuana and its constituents in memory formation are relatively recent. They have been aided by both the development of synthetic cannabinoid drugs and the identification of specific receptors located in bot...
Cannabinoids and Medicine II: The Role of Cannabinoids in Multiple Sclerosis and Neuronal Damage
Gareth Pryce and David Baker
It is becoming increasingly clear that many neurological diseases share common mechanisms of neurotoxicity and one of primary importance appears to be perturbation of glutamate signaling resulting in excitotoxic neuronal death. The location of these events and the type of neuronal damage leads to...
Cannabinoids and Medicine: Eating Disorders, Nausea and Emesis
Tim C. Kirkham
This chapter explores current knowledge relating to the actions of cannabinoids that are relevant to clinical conditions in which appetite, body weight, nausea or emesis are core features. Following a description of current understanding of the possible role of endocannabinoids in the control of eat...
Cardiovascular Effects of Melatonin
Ewa Sewerynek
In the course of aging, the incidence of both acute and chronic heart diseases, systematically increases. Concentrations of some hormones decrease in the course of aging, e.g., melatonin concentrations in serum and urinary levels of its main metabolite, 6-sulphatoxymelatonin, are lower in olde...
Cell Adhesion Molecules
Ciaran M. Regan
The molecular cascade of events associated with hippocampal processing of information for long-term storage is a time-limited event. Learning sets in motion neural processes that continue to evolve after training, a phenomenon known as consolidation. The consolidation process has been proposed to...
Cell Therapies for Muscular Dystrophy
Terence A Partridge
Destruction of muscle fibres accompanied by a reactive regenerative response is a major defining characteristic that distinguishes the muscular dystrophies from the more general category of myopathies caused by genetic defects that impact on skeletal muscle.1 In the early stages of severe dystrop...
Chemistry and Structure Activity Relationships for Tetrahydrocannibinols and Endocannabinoids
R.K. Razdan
An overview is presented of the chemistry and the known structure activity relationships (SAR) for tetrahydrocannabinols (THCs), endocannabinoids and pyrazole based an tagonists. An attempt has been made to highlight and put in perspective the cannabinoid work carried out before and after the d...
Chronic Disease and Sleep Architecture Pharmacotherapeutic Considerations
James J. Herdegen
This chapter details the pattern of sleep disturbances asso ciated with chronic medical conditions. It illustrates the disturbances in sleep architecture manifested by a number of medical conditions as detailed by EEG or polysomnography. Sleep disturbances are common with a number of medical co...
Clinical Pharmacokinetics of SSRIs
Pierre Baumann, Chin B Eap and Pierre Voirol
Citalopram,1 fluoxetine,2,3 fluvoxamine,4 paroxetine5 and sertraline6 are the five anti- depressants which are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) (Fig. 2.1). Their clinical efficacy, good tol...
Clinical Utility of the Antioxidant Melatonin in the Newborn
Eloisa Gitto, Russel J. Reiter, Aurelio Amodio and Ignacio Barberi
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are considered to play a major role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of human disorders. This may be a particularly important pathogenetic mechanism in the newborn nursery. The phrase “oxygen radical disease of prematurity” has been coined to collectively describe...
Corticosteroids
Carmen Sandi
Glucocorticoid hormones, released from the adrenal glands, easily access the brain where they can affect neural structure and function through the binding to two types of intracellular receptors, the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Secretion of these steroids...
CREB
Paul W. Frankland and Sheena A. Josselyn
The cAMP Responsive Element Binding Protein (CREB) is an activity regulated transcription factor that modulates the transcription of genes with cAMP responsive elements (CRE) located in their promoter regions. A variety of signaling pathways converge to phosphorylate CREB at Ser133 and induce tra...
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