Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Widening Spinal Injury Research To Consider All Supraspinal Cell Types: Why We Must And How We Can, Murray G. Blackmore, Eliazbeth Batsel, Pantelis Tsoulfas

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

The supraspinal connectome consists of dozens of neuronal populations that project axons from the brain to the spinal cord to influence a wide range of motor, autonomic, and sensory functions. The complexity and wide distribution of supraspinal neurons present significant technical challenges, leading most spinal cord injury research to focus on a handful of major pathways such as the corticospinal, rubrospinal, and raphespinal. Much less is known about many additional populations that carry information to modulate or compensate for these main pathways, or which carry pre-autonomic and other information of high value to individuals with spinal injury. A confluence of …

Modulatory Actions Of The Glycine Receptor Β Subunit On The Positive Allosteric Modulation Of Ethanol In Α2 Containing Receptors, Braulio Muñoz, Trinidad Mariqueo, Pablo Murath, Christian Peters, Gonzalo E. Yevenes, Gustavo Moraga-Cid, Robert W. Peoples, Luis G. Aguayo

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Alpha1-containing glycine receptors (GlyRs) are major mediators of synaptic inhibition in the spinal cord and brain stem. Recent studies reported the presence of α2-containing GlyRs in other brain regions, such as nucleus accumbens and cerebral cortex. GlyR activation decreases neuronal excitability associated with sensorial information, motor control, and respiratory functions; all of which are significantly altered during ethanol intoxication. We evaluated the role of β GlyR subunits and of two basic amino acid residues, K389 and R390, located in the large intracellular loop (IL) of the α2 GlyR subunit, which are important for binding and functional modulation by Gβγ, the …

Prelimbic Prefrontal Cortical Encoding Of Reward Predictive Cues, Mitchell Spring, Karan R. Soni, Daniel S. Wheeler, Robert A. Wheeler

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Animals appoint incentive value and learn to approach otherwise behaviorally inert stimuli if these stimuli come to predict the delivery of reward. Interestingly, this adaptive Pavlovian learning process has been implicated in behavioral control disorders, such as drug addiction. One brain region implicated in directing conditioned approach behavior is the prelimbic region of the prefrontal cortex. The present study employed in vivo electrophysiology in the prelimbic cortex to characterize the distribution of neural responses to the presence of a cue that had acquired incentive value after being associated with a primary reward. Male rats were trained in a Pavlovian autoshaping …

Bolstering Geometric Morphometrics Sample Sizes With Damaged And Pathologic Specimens: Is Near Enough Good Enough?, D. Rex Mitchell, Claire A. Kirchhoff, Siobhán B. Cooke, Claire E. Terhune

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Obtaining coordinate data for geometric morphometric studies often involves the sampling of dry skeletal specimens from museum collections. But many specimens exhibit damage and/or pathologic conditions. Such specimens can be considered inadequate for the analyses of shape and are excluded from study. However, the influences that damaged specimens may have on the assessment of normal shape variation have only been explored in two-dimensional coordinate data and no studies have addressed the inclusion of pathological specimens to date. We collected three-dimensional coordinate data from the cranium and mandible of 100 crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis). Tests typically employed to analyze shape variation …

Chronic Stress Prevents Cortico-Accumbens Cue Encoding And Alters Conditioned Approach, Mitchell Spring, Aaron Caccamise, Elizabeth A. Panther, Bethany M. Windsor, Karan R. Soni, Jayme R. Mcreynolds, Daniel S. Wheeler, John R. Mantsch, Robert A. Wheeler

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Chronic stress impairs the function of multiple brain regions and causes severe hedonic and motivational deficits. One brain region known to be susceptible to these effects is the PFC. Neurons in this region, specifically neuronal projections from the prelimbic region (PL) to the nucleus accumbens core (NAcC), have a significant role in promoting motivated approach. However, little is known about how activity in this pathway changes during associative learning to encode cues that promote approach. Less is known about how activity in this pathway may be altered by stress. In this study, an intersectional fiber photometry approach was used in …

Intracellular Β1-Adrenergic Receptors And Organic Cation Transporter 3 Mediate Phospholamban Phosphorylation To Enhance Cardiac Contractility, Ying Wang, Qian Shi, Minghui Li, Meimi Zhao, Raghavender Reddy Gopireddy, Jian-Peng Teoh, Bing Xu, Chaoqun Zhu, Kyle E. Ireton, Sanghavi Srinivasan, Shaoliang Chen, Paul J. Gasser, Julie Bossuyt, Johannes W. Hell, Donald M. Bers, Yang K. Xiang

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Rationale:

β₁ARs (β₁-adrenoceptors) exist at intracellular membranes and OCT3 (organic cation transporter 3) mediates norepinephrine entry into cardiomyocytes. However, the functional role of intracellular β₁AR in cardiac contractility remains to be elucidated.

Objective:

Test localization and function of intracellular β₁AR on cardiac contractility.

Methods and Results:

Membrane fractionation, super-resolution imaging, proximity ligation, coimmunoprecipitation, and single-molecule pull-down demonstrated a pool of β₁ARs in mouse hearts that were associated with sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca²⁺-ATPase at the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). Local PKA (protein kinase A) activation was measured using a PKA biosensor …

Vasopressin Regulates Daily Rhythms And Circadian Clock Circuits In A Manner Influenced By Sex, Kayla Rohr, Adam Telega, Alexandra Savaglio, Jennifer A. Evans

Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is a neurohormone that alters cellular physiology through both endocrine and synaptic signaling. Circadian rhythms in AVP release and other biological processes are driven by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the anterior hypothalamus. Loss of vasopressin signaling alters circadian behavior, but the basis of these effects remains unclear. Here we investigate the role of AVP signaling in circadian timekeeping by analyzing behavior and SCN function in a novel AVP-deficient mouse model. Consistent with previous work, loss of AVP signaling increases water consumption and accelerates recovery to simulated jetlag. We expand on these results to show that loss …