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2/7.3 (KCNQ2/3), but not the BK (KCa1.1) and IK (KCa3.1) channels, increased the power of gamma oscillations. On the contrary, activators of these channels had an attenuating effect without affecting the frequency. Pharmacological blockade of the low voltage-activated T-type calcium channels (CaV3.1-3.3) reduced gamma power and increased the oscillation peak frequency. Enhancement of these channels also inhibited the peak power without altering the frequency of the oscillations. The presented data suggest that voltage- and calcium-activated ion channels involved in intrinsic excitability strongly regulate the power of hippocampal gamma oscillations. Targeting these channels could represent a valuable pharmacological strategy against cognitive impairment.Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an inherited disorder characterized by degeneration of motor neurons and symmetrical muscle weakness and atrophy. Moyamoya syndrome (MMS) or moyamoya disease (MMD) is radiologically defined by chronic cerebrovascular occlusion with abnormal vascular network formation in the skull base. We report herein a 21-year-old female patient with limb weakness and muscular atrophy for 17 years. Electromyography revealed extensive motor neuron damage. Cranial MRA showed occlusion of bilateral anterior and middle cerebral arteries, with increased peripheral blood vessels and collateral circulation. She was diagnosed as SMA type IIIb combined with MMS following genetic testing, in which homozygous deletion of exons 7 and 8 of survival motor neuron (SMN)1 gene and 3 copies of exons 7 and 8 of SMN2 gene were detected. After treatment, the patient's symptoms improved. Our study found that the rare SMA and MMS co-exist. We speculated that the moyamoya phenomenon may be related to the abnormal regulation of intracranial vascular endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells in proliferation and differentiation caused by functional defects of SMN protein. The relationship between the two diseases needs to be further elucidated in future clinical work.Objectives Cigarette smoking is associated with postoperative pain perception, which might be mediated by beta-endorphin and substance P. These effects on postoperative pain perception have never been investigated in human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which reflects biochemical alterations in the brain. Therefore, we investigated the associations among cigarette smoking, postoperative pain, and levels of beta-endorphin and substance P in human CSF. Methods We recruited 160 Chinese men (80 active smokers and 80 nonsmokers) who underwent lumbar puncture before anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, and 5-ml CSF samples were collected. Pain visual analog scale (VAS) scores, post-anesthetic recovery duration (PARD), and smoking variables were obtained. CSF levels of beta-endorphin and substance P were measured. Results Compared to non-smokers, active smokers had significantly higher pain VAS (2.40 ± 0.67 vs. 1.70 ± 0.86, p less then 0.001) and PARD scores (9.13 ± 2.11 vs. 7.27 ± 1.35, p = 0.001), lower CSF beta-endorphin (33.76 ± 1.77 vs. 35.66 ± 2.20, p = 0.001) and higher CSF substance P (2,124.46 ± 217.34 vs. 1,817.65 ± 302.14, p less then 0.001) levels. Pain VAS scores correlated with PARD in active smokers (r = 0.443, p = 0.001). Conclusions Cigarette smoking is associated with increased postoperative pain intensity, shown by delayed pain perception, higher pain VAS scores, and lower beta-endorphin and higher substance P levels in the CSF of active smokers. The more extended postoperative pain perception is delayed, the more pain intensity increases.Glaucoma is a heterogeneous eye disease causing atrophy of the optic nerve head (ONH). The optic nerve is formed by the axons of the retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) that transmit visual input to the brain. The progressive RGC loss during glaucoma leads to irreversible vision loss. An elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is described as main risk factor in glaucoma. In this study, a multielectrode array (MEA)-based ex vivo glaucoma acute model was established and the effects of hydrostatic pressure (10, 30, 60, and 90 mmHg) on the functionality and survival of adult male and female wild-type mouse (C57BL/6) retinae were investigated. Spontaneous activity, response rate to electrical and light stimulation, and bursting behavior of RGCs was analyzed prior, during, and after pressure stress. No pressure related effects on spontaneous firing and on the response rate of the RGCs were observed. Even a high pressure level (90 mmHg for 2 h) did not disturb the RGC functionality. However, the cells' bursting behavior significantly changed under 90 mmHg. The number of spikes in bursts doubled during pressure application and stayed on a high level after pressure stress. Addition of the amino sulfonic acid taurine (1 mM) showed a counteracting effect. OFF ganglion cells did not reveal an increase in bursts under pressure stress. Live/dead staining after pressure application showed no significant changes in RGC survival. The findings of our ex vivo model suggest that RGCs are tolerant toward high, short-time pressure stress.Mitochondrial network is constantly in a dynamic and regulated balance of fusion and fission processes, which is known as mitochondrial dynamics. Mitochondria make physical contacts with almost every other membrane in the cell thus impacting cellular functions. Mutations in mitochondrial dynamics genes are known to cause neurogenetic diseases. To better understand the consequences on the cellular phenotype and pathophysiology of neurogenetic diseases associated with defective mitochondrial dynamics, we have compared the fibroblasts phenotypes of (i) patients carrying pathogenic variants in genes involved in mitochondrial dynamics such as DRP1 (also known as DNM1L), GDAP1, OPA1, and MFN2, and (ii) patients carrying mutated genes that their dysfunction affects mitochondria or induces a mitochondrial phenotype, but that are not directly involved in mitochondrial dynamic network, such as FXN (encoding frataxin, located in the mitochondrial matrix), MED13 (hyperfission phenotype), and CHKB (enlarged mitochondria punctional role of GDAP1 and MFN2 in mitochondria-lysosome MCSs. Finally, we observed starvation-induced autophagy alterations in DRP1 K75E/+, GDAP1 W67L/W67L, OPA1 F570L/+, MFN2 R104W/+, and CHKB Q198*/Q198* fibroblasts. These genes are related to mitochondrial membrane structure or lipid composition, which would associate the OMM with starvation-induced autophagy. In conclusion, the study of mitochondrial dynamics and mitochondria-lysosome axis in a group of patients with different neurogenetic diseases has deciphered common and unique cellular phenotypes of degrading and non-degrading pathways that shed light on pathophysiological events, new biomarkers and pharmacological targets for these disorders.

Iron accumulation in the brain leads to the development of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Nowadays, iron chelation therapy is the best way to decrease the side effects of iron and amyloid plaques accumulation. Iron chelators are commonly used for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Previous studies have shown that natural products such as phenol and flavonoid compounds could chelate heavy metals. In the current study, we examined the iron chelation activity of hesperidin and coumarin on the brain tissue of iron-overloaded mice.

48 NMRI male mice were divided into eight groups (

= 6). Six groups were treated with iron dextran (100 mg/kg/day) four times a week for 6 weeks. After stopping the injections for a month, five groups of iron-overloaded mice were treated with hesperidin, coumarin, and desferal four times a week subsequent for four subsequent weeks. Finally, the mice were anesthetized, and blood samples were collected from the ventricle of the heart for subsequent examination. The brain tissues were isolated and fixed in the 4% paraformaldehyde solution for Perl's staining.

The results show that hesperidin and coumarin could strongly chelate excessive iron from the serum and deposit iron from the brain tissue compared to desferal group. Catalase and super oxidase activity were decreased in the iron-overloaded group, but in the treated group by hesperidin and coumarin, the enzyme's activity was increased significantly.

Hesperidin and coumarin, as natural products, are powerful options to chelate iron ions and increase the activity of antioxidant enzymes.

Hesperidin and coumarin, as natural products, are powerful options to chelate iron ions and increase the activity of antioxidant enzymes.Cultured meat is a novel technology that uses tissue engineering to expand cells taken from animals to grow muscle for consumption as food. Those supporting the technology anticipate it could radically disrupt livestock farming with, they propose, significant benefits for the environment, human health, and animal wellbeing. This paper examines the emergence of this sector through the prism of one of the leading companies - Memphis Meats - in particular focusing upon their online recruitment activity in online videos. Founded in 2015, by 2020 they had announced investment of over $160 m to build a pilot-plant and recruit staff to bring cultured meat closer to commercialization. This paper argues the company's recruitment videos work to enact what I term "producibility", a concept aligned to existing work on "edibility", that emphasizes the process of becoming that foodstuff (included novel foodstuffs) undergo. I deploy existing theoretical work on multiple categories of futures - big/little, individual/institutional/field - to analyze Memphis Meats' online recruitment activity. I argue that, by entangling science and food futures, the company's videos work to assert the status and politics of cultured meat, render it producible and edible, and articulate a novel and transformative food-professional identity the cultured meat producer.Challenged by the Covid-19 crisis, CEOs must rethink about how to operate and exist in the new working environment. We examine if managerial ability of the CEO impacts firm performance during the crisis period. We find a positive and significant association between the CEO managerial ability and both the cumulative raw and abnormal returns. We also find that firms with better CEO managerial ability are more resilient and have higher ROE than their counterparts. We find that the CEOs with higher managerial ability have higher pre-pandemic liquidity which in part explains the better performance amid the Covid-19 crisis.The Duffing oscillator of a system with strong quadratic damping is considered. We give an elementary approximate analytical solution to this oscillator in terms of exponential and trigonometric functions. We compare the analytical approximant with the Runge-Kutta numerical solution. We also solve the oscillator by menas of He's homotopy method and the famous Krylov-Bogoliubov-Mitropolsky method. The approximant allows estimating the points at which the solution crosses the horizontal axis.In this study, we aim to investigate the effective dose of botulinum neurotoxin A that results in paralysis of the sternocleidomastoid muscle for a minimum duration of 28 days in Wistar rats. This research is the first in a series of studies to investigate the value of botulinum toxin A in the healing of clavicle fractures through the temporary paralysis of the sternocleidomastoid. A surgical incision was made under general anaesthesia, and botulinum neurotoxin A in respective doses of 4 and 6 international units (IU) or normal saline in equivalent volumes were injected directly into the exposed muscle. Electromyography was conducted on days 0, 7, and 28 following substance administration to determine the extent of muscle paralysis. Electromyography on day 0 showed no paralysis in either group. Animals injected with neurotoxin all exhibited paralysis on days 7 and 28 that was weaker in the group injected with the smaller dose of 4 IU. One death occurred in the group injected with the higher dose (6 IU), whereas in the control group, no paralysis was seen.