Neuropharmacology
Chapters
« previous | page 2 of 5 pages | next »Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome: A Melatonin Onset Disorder
M.G. Smits and S.R. Pandi-Perumal
Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) is a common but little reported cause of severe insomnia. Characteristic symptoms of this poorly defined circadian rhythm disorder are sleep onset insomnia and trouble to awake at conventional hours. Generally DSPS patients feel more alert at night than in the ...
Diagnosis, Pathophysiology and Treatment of Hypersomnias
Sebastiaan Overeem and Michel Billiard
Besides the obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome, the most prevalent cause of hypersomnia, other disorders may be the cause of more severe hypersomnia. These include primary disorders of the central nervous system and hypersomnia associated with various medical disorders. Among the first ...
Diurnal 5-HT Production and Melatonin Formation
Jimo Borjigin and Jie Deng
We have provided evidence that pineal 5-hydroxytryptomine (5-HT or serotonin) production is up regulated at night, and is controlled by beta-adrenergic signaling.1 In this paper, we demonstrate that the increased 5-HT synthesis is due to increased protein expression of tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH...
Dopamine
Jan P.C. de Bruin
Since the discovery that dopamine occurs in the cerebral cortex and functions as a trans mitter a large number of studies has been conducted to examine its precise functions. It was found that administering dopaminergic drugs, either stimulating or inhibiting dopamine receptors, affected various ...
Drug Effects on Dreaming
Mehmet Yucel Agargun and Hanefi Ozbek
Among the proposed functions of dreaming in human be ing, the most research supports are mood-regulation, problem-solving, learning, and memory construction. Recent imaging techniques have provided meaningful information on functional neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of REM sleep and dreaming. ...
Effect of Melatonin on Life Span and Longevity
Vladimir N. Anisimov
During the past decade, a number of reports, sometimes contradictory, appeared concerning the role of the pineal gland in aging.1-4 Melatonin is the main pineal hormone synthesized from tryptophan, predominantly at night time.5 Melatonin is critical for the regulation of circadian and seasonal ch...
Endocannabinoids
Luciano De Petrocellis, Tiziana Bisogno and Vincenzo Di Marzo
The discovery of endogenous ligands of cannabinoid receptors, the endocannabinoids, opened a new age in research on cannabinoids and their receptors. The endocannabinoids discovered so far are all derivatives of arachidonic acid (or of other long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids), and include...
Endocannabinoids and Alcohol Drinking
George Kunos, Lei Wang, Jie Liu, Douglas Osei-Hyiaman and Judith Harvey-White
Alcohol is the most widely abused substance in Western societies, and the economic and societal costs of alcoholism surpass the cost of all other drugs of abuse combined. Alcoholism has all the classical hallmarks of drug abuse: chronic excessive alcohol consumption leads to tolerance as well as ...
Endocannabinoids and Related Fatty Acid Derivatives in Pain Modulation: Behavioral, Neurophysiological and Neuroanatomical Perspectives on Cannabinoid Antinociception
Andrea G. Hohmann and J.Michael Walker
Cannabinoids are antinociceptive in animal models of acute and persistent nociception. This review examines the biology of endocannabinoids and behavioral, neurophysi ological and neuroanatomical evidence supporting a role for cannabinoids in modulation of nociceptive transmission. The developmen...
Eph Receptors and Their Ephrin Ligands in Neural Plasticity
Robert Gerlai
Eph receptor tyrosine kinases are largely known for their involvement in brain development. But, as these receptors are also expressed in the adult, their possible role in the mature nervous system has begun to be explored. Emerging evidence for the involvement of Eph receptors in synaptic plasti...
Expression and Signal Transduction Pathways of Melatonin Receptors in Pituitary
Hana Zemkova, Ales Balik and Stanko S. Stojilkovic
Pituitary cells from neonatal animals express functional MT1 subtype of melatonin receptors that signal through pertussis toxin-sensitive G proteins. Their activation by melatonin leads to a decrease in cAMP production and activity of protein kinase A, and attenuation of gonadotropin-releasing ho...
Extrapineal Melatonin: Location and Role in Pathological Processes
Igor M. Kvetnoy, Natalia S. Sinitskaya and Tatiana V. Kvetnaia
Melatonin (5-methoxy-N-acetyltryptamine) is a major hormone produced by the pi neal gland. Presence of melatonin in the pineal gland was first reported in 1958 by Lerner et al.75 Since this discovery it was clearly demonstrated that melatonin plays crucial role in the regulation daily and seasona...
GABAA Receptor Subtypes in Sedation and Hypnosis
Esa R. Korpi
Drugs, such as sedative-hypnotics and anesthetics, are able to strongly regulate the vigilance state by affecting the main fast inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor system in the brain, the GABAA receptor system. Agonists, such as classical benzodiazepines, are today the most widely used hypnoti...
gamma-Amino-Butyric Acid (GABA)
Claudio Castellano, Vincenzo Cestari and Alessandro Ciamei
In this chapter studies are considered concerning the actions of GABAA and GABAB receptor agonists and antagonists on memory formation in laboratory animals. Peripheral posttraining administrations of GABAergic drugs produce time- and dose-dependent effects on memory in animals tested in a variet...
Genomic Distributions of Human Retroelements
Dixie L. Mager, Louie N. van de Lagemaat and Patrik Medstrand
Nearly half of the human and primate genome is derived from ancient transposable elements, primarily retroelements. This surprising fact alone suggests that retroelements have played a major role in genome organization and evolution. Here we review studies performed in the last 20 years on the chr...
Glutamate Receptors
Gernot Riedel, Jacques Micheau and Bettina Platt
Glutamate as a neurotransmitter plays a critical role in multiple processes in the brain from early development to ageing and includes important functions in memory formation. Both ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors are involved in these functions but a close review assessing the con...
Head Injuries and Sleep
Chanth Seyone and Babita Kara
The above quote crystallizes who we, as individuals, are. We are a species with the ability to remember, especially those moments in life that stand out and that act as guides in our path through the maze of life. In patients with head injuries, these guides become absent and the maze unforgivin...
Herbal Medicines and Sleep
Marcello Spinella
Living in a complex and dangerous environment as humans have for most of our evolutionary history requires one to possess effective mechanisms of arousal, both consciousness and emotional, in order to meet the demands of the environment. An organism needs to be able to arouse behaviorally in or...
Heterologous Modulation of Androgen Receptor Nucleo-Cytoplasmic Shuttling by Melatonin: A Novel Mode of Regulating Androgen Sensitivity
Nava Zisapel
Melatonin, the hormone secreted nocturnally from the pineal gland, is an androgen protagonist in vivo. Its effects are mostly demonstrable under conditions of low circulating androgen levels (e.g., during pubertal development, under conditions of chemical or surgical castration or androgen ablati...
Histamine
Rüdiger U. Hasenöhrl and Joseph P. Huston
Histamine is an important but largely neglected modulator in the central nervous sys- tem. Histaminergic neurons are located exclusively in the posterior hypothalamus, the tuberomammillary nucleus (TM), from where they project to almost all brain regions, with ventral areas (hypothalamus, basal...
Immediate-Early Genes
Jeffrey Greenwood, Pauline Curtis, Barbara Logan, Wickliffe Abraham and Mike Dragunow
How long-term memories are formed in the brain is one of the principal targets of contemporary neuroscience research. This work is important from a fundamental perspective, because memory is a vital component of virtually all cognitive activity. It is also important from a clinical perspective...
Influence of Melatonin on the Health and Diseases of the Retina
Allan F. Wiechmann
Melatonin released from the pineal gland acts as an endocrine hormone on many distant target cells. Melatonin is also produced in the retina of most vertebrates, including humans, but its most likely role is to serve as a paracrine and intracrine signal of darkness to retinal cells. Melatonin pro...
Learning-Induced Synaptogenesis and Structural Synaptic Remodeling
Yuri Geinisman, Robert W. Berry and Olga T. Ganeshina
This chapter analyzes the results of quantitative electron microscopic studies of the vertebrate brain aimed at the elucidation of changes in synaptic unltrastructure that may underlie learning and memory. It has been reported that behavioral learning promotes new synapse formation, including bot...
Long-Term Use of Sleeping Pills in Chronic Insomnia
Milton Kramer
Elderly patients, among others, will often describe the benefits they derive from taking sleeping pills.1 Their physicians feel obliged to reduce or take them off such medication. Most medical experts will support such efforts, especially in the elderly fearing the increased risk of falls and th...
MAP Kinases
Joel C. Selcher, Edwin J. Weeber and J. David Sweatt
In neurons the extracellular-signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) are emerging as important regulators of neuronal function. This chapter will discuss the great progress that has been made in identifying the essential components of the signal transduction pathways that lead to ERK activation and sever...
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