Administration of adenosine receptor agonists increases cerebral blood flow (CBF,Van Wylen et al, 1989). We previously used arterial spin labeled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map changes in CBF early after injection of the non-selective adenosine receptor agonist 2-chloroadenosine (2-CA) into rat brain (Kochanek et al, 2001). 2-4-fold increases in local and hemispheric CBF were seen. We now report the duration and receptor specificity of these effects. Anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats were injected with either saline vehicle (2 μl) or 2-CA (12 nmoles in 2 μl) into left dorsal hippocampus. At the NMR center, rats were anesthetized with pentobarbital and imaged at either ~3.5h or 1 day. MRI (perfusion, T1obs) was performed at 4.7T. CBF (ml/100g/min) in ipsilateral hippocampus was 217±50 (mean±SD) at ~3.5h after 2-CA injection vs 296±36 and 65±21 at ~24h in 2-CA and sham, respectively (p<0.05 for 2-CA vs sham at either time point). In cortex, CBF was 136±50 at ~3.5h after 2-CA injection vs 261±71 ...

Spinal cord injuries (SCI) lead to major handicaps affecting over 2.5 million people worldwide. Major shortcomings in therapeutic translation to clinics is due to many factors including species differences, development of predictive animal models and di...

A network of cortical regions associated with deductive reasoning tasks, performed either with visual or auditory stimuli, was isolated utilizing fMRI. The hypothesis that some of the identified cortical regions are supra-modal while others are modality-specific was tested. Subjects either read or listened to two statements and indicated if the following conclusion was valid or invalid for each trial. Conclusion images were analyzed by a voxel-by-voxel, multistage statistical analysis and a logical AND operation identified modality-independent voxels. The next stage identified those supra-modal brain regions that were conserved across all subjects. A further logical operation, AND NOT, was applied to identify modality-specific cortical regions. The pattern of brain regions that subserved reasoning in both sensory modalities consisted of left inferior,medial and middle frontal gyri; and bilateral middle frontal gyri and inferior parietal lobule with a left-hemisphere bias. Further, modality-specific activat...

Human and animal data suggest that the mere observation of biological motion activates those premotor areas that also underlie the initiation of the same motion. However, data also indicate that the human premotor cortex (PM), in contrast to the monkey PM, responds not only to the observation of goal-directed (transitive) motion but also to intransitive motion. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test this hypothesis directly. Participants were presented cycles of intransitive motion specified as belonging to the distal (fingers and mouth), proximal (knee, ankle, elbow, and wrist), or axial (trunk and shoulder) motion class. Attention to motion was behaviorally tested by a forced-choice task on motion acceleration and deceleration. Results revealed extended PM activation for each motion condition. However, direct contrasts showed that the most significant activations were elicited in ventrolateral PM by distal motion, in dorsolateral PM by proximal motion, and medial PM (supplem...

The stereokinetic effect (SKE) is a visual phenomenon in which a figure rotating in the frontal plane about the visual axis can create the impression of a three-dimensional (3-D) object. For a typical example, when an SKE stimulus consisting of two asym...

SfN’s Pre-Conference Sessions occur before the official start of the annual meeting and provide an opportunity to learn from global experts on emerging scientific topics and techniques, advances in our understanding of neurobiological diseases, and rigorous and responsible conduct of scientific research. Space is limited and registration is required for Friday’s Short Courses. To attend, add the appropriate course to your annual meeting registration. Attendees of Meet the Experts sessions must be registered for the annual meeting but no separate registration or fee is required for these Saturday morning sessions. Space is limited and attendees are encouraged to arrive early for their priority session.

The amyloid-β oligomer (AβO) hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the central foci in Alzheimer’s research. The AβO hypothesis posits that synapse loss and nerve cell death leading to AD is instigated by soluble oligomeric species of the amy...

Quantitative assessment of the central nervous system enables ecomorphologists and sensory neurobiologists to correlate the morphology and relative size of sensory brain regions with behavior and ecology. Assessment of the contribution of each sensory b...

It has been proposed, in accordance with parental investment theory, that different selection pressures on males and females have resulted in greater inhibition abilities in women. This led us to hypothesise that inhibitory control may vary as a functio...

We recently discovered a dopamine-independent impairment in memory-based decision-making in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) (Perugini et al., 2016; Perugini & Basso, 2018). Although the neural circuitry responsible for this deficit is unknown, it i...