Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition. Splenectomy may play a protective role in the development of SCI. However, little is known about whether the timing of splenectomy affects the outcome after SCI. Investigation into splenectomy after SCI would provide insight into how the timing can be selected following SCI to improve neurological outcomes. Rats were randomized into a sham group, a nonsplenectomized group (NonSPX), four splenectomized groups with the surgery performed immediately, 6 h, 12 h, and 24 h after SCI (SPX0, SPX6, SPX12, and SPX24, respectively). Rats were subjected to severe contusive SCI at the level of the third thoracic vertebra. At different time points following SCI, BBB score was used to assess the recovery of injury. The animals in each group were randomly selected for tissue collection at day 3, 14, and 28 after surgery. Then, immunohistochemistry of immunologic cells was performed and inflammatory mediators were determined. Our study showed that splenectomy within 6 h ...

Despite numerous studies examining the mechanisms of operant conditioning (OC), the diversity of OC plasticity loci and their synergism have not been examined sufficiently. In the well-characterized feeding neural circuit of Aplysia , in vivo and in vitro appetitive OC increases neuronal excitability and electrical coupling among several neurons leading to an increase in expression of ingestive behavior. Here we used the in vitro analogue of OC to investigate whether OC reduces the excitability of a neuron, B4, whose inhibitory connections decrease expression of ingestive behavior. We found OC decreased the excitability of B4. This change appeared intrinsic to B4 because it could be replicated with an analogue of OC in isolated cultures of B4 neurons. In addition to changes in B4 excitability, OC decreased the strength of B4’s inhibitory connection to a key decision-making neuron, B51. The OC-induced changes were specific without affecting the excitability of another neuron critical for feeding behavior, B...

Neonatal hydrocephalus presents with various degrees of neuroinflammation and long-term neurological deficits in surgically treated patients, provoking a need for additional medical treatment. We previously reported elevated neuroinflammation and severe periventricular white matter damage in the progressive hydrocephalus ( prh ) mutant which contains a point mutation in the Ccdc39 gene, causing loss of cilia-mediated unidirectional cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow. In this study, we identified cortical neuropil maturation defects such as impaired excitatory synapse maturation and loss of homeostatic microglia, and swimming locomotor defects in early postnatal prh mutant mice. Strikingly, systemic application of the anti-inflammatory small molecule bindarit significantly supports healthy postnatal cerebral cortical development in the prh mutant. While bindarit only mildly reduced the ventricular volume, it significantly improved the edematous appearance and myelination of the corpus callosum. Moreover, the tr...

Sarael Alcauter is an assistant professor in the department of behavioral and cognitive neurobiology at the Institute of Neurobiology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Sergei Kirov is a professor in the department of neurosurgery and brain and the Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia.

Sheena Josselyn is a senior scientist in The Hospital for Sick Children’s Neurosciences and Mental Health Program.

Sho Aoki is a postdoctoral scholar at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Silke Nuber and coworkers generated and deeply characterized numerous transgenic rodent models to study PD and related disorders, including the first inducible α-synuclein (αS) transgenic mice, humanized BAC-wildtype human αS tg rat models.

Sridevi Venkatesan is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in India, and is currently a third-year PhD student in the department of physiology at the University of Toronto.