Platelets

and a large variety of leukocyte subpopulations also were shown to be infectious. The use of endpoint titration in tg338 mice indicated that the infectivity in WBC (per ml of blood) was 10(6.5)-fold lower than that in 1 g of posterior brainstem sample. In both WBC and brainstem, infectivity displayed similar resistance to PK digestion. The data strongly support the concept that WBC are an accurate target for reliable TSE detection by PMCA. The presence of infectivity in short-life-span blood cellular elements raises the question of the origin of prionemia.”
“Accumulating evidence indicates that the Notch signaling pathway fulfills important roles in ischemia-stimulated neurogenesis, which may be regarded as an phosphatase inhibitor etiological factor in post-stroke depression. Here we explored Notch, signaling, hippocampal neurogenesis and behavioral responses to chronic unpredicted mild stress (CUMS) in adult ischemic rats.

Animals were CX-6258 cost treated with permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion followed by an 18 day CUMS procedure. Proliferating cells in the hippocampus and their cell fate were investigated on days 19 and 28 after ischemic surgery. Additionally, expression of the Notch, intracellular domain (NICD) and its downstream targets Hes1 and Hes5 was examined. A sucrose preference test and forced swim test were used to assess behavioral responses. CUMS produced depressive-like behaviors and decreased the number of proliferating cells on day 19 (both p<0.001), accompanied by a decreased expression of both NU7026 Hes1 and Hes5 in the hippocampus of ischemic animals (p<0.001). On day 28, CUMS resulted in a decreased number of neurogenically-differentiating cells in the subgranular zone (p<0.001) while permitting differentiation into astrocytes in the hilus

(p<0.05). Hes1 and Hes5 protein expression levels were increased. The expression of the NICD was significantly decreased at both time-points. CUMS led to expression changes in the Notch, signaling cascade in ischemic rats, most of which concerned hippocampal neurogenesis. This suggests that variation in Notch, activity and subsequent expression of its downstream targets, including Hes1 and Hes5, may, at least in part, contribute to modulation of ischemia-related hippocampal neurogenesis by CUMS. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“The orienting of attention to internal or mnemonic representations held in visual working memory (VWM) has recently become a field of increasing interest. While a number of studies support the hypothesis that attention to selected representations in VWM reduces memory load, conclusive findings are still missing.