3. Awake Striatal Spinal Neuronssans Ups and Downs
Sverine Mahon, Nicolas Vautrelle, Laurent Pezard, Sen J. Slaght, Jean- Michel Deniau, Guy Chouvet, and Stphane Charpier
Ups and downs are part of daily life, but as Mahon et al. show this week, ups and downs may be mostly a part of nightly life for medium-sized spiny neurons (MSNs) in the striatum. The authors examined the activity of rat MSNs during wakefulness, slow wave sleep, and paradoxical sleep. Previous studies, largely carried out in anesthetized animals, had reported that MSNs undergo rhythmic membrane potential fluctuations between a hyperpolarized quiescent down state and a depolarized up state associated with action potential discharge. However, by obtaining intracellular recordings from MSNs free of anesthetic, the authors report that these rhythmic up and down shifts only occurred during slow-wave sleep. In the transition from sleep to wakefulness, striatal discharge switched to an irregular firing pattern. Because MSNs are the major input to basal ganglia, such state-dependent changes in firing patterns are likely to have a major influence on basal ganglia function.
4. A Clue to Gender Influences on Depression
Lisa M. Hines, Paula L. Hoffman, Sanjiv Bhave, Laura Saba, Alan Kaiser, Larry Snell, Igor Goncharov, Lucie LeGault, Maurice Dongier, Bridget Grant, Sergey Pronko, Larry Martinez, Masami Yoshimura, and Boris Tabakoff; World Health Organization/International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism Study on State and Trait Markers of Alcohol Use and Dependence Investigators
Studies have indicated that women are at greater risk for major depression than men. Ac
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Contact: Sara Harris
sharris@sfn.org
202-962-4000
Society for Neuroscience
28-Nov-2006