Striatal cholinergic interneurons provide modulation to striatal circuits involved in voluntary motor control and goal-directed behaviors through their autonomous tonic discharge and their firing “pause” responses to novel ...

Background: Enhanced striatal cholinergic interneuron activity contributes to the striatal hypercholinergic state in Parkinson's disease (PD) and to levodopa-induced dyskinesia. In severe PD, dyskinesia and motor fluctuations ...

The mechanism underlying a hypercholinergic state in Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains uncertain. Here, we show that disruption of the Kv1 channel-mediated function causes hyperexcitability of striatal cholinergic interneurons ...

Striatal cholinergic interneurons show tonic spiking activity in the intact and sliced brain, which stems from intrinsic mechanisms. Because of it, they are also known as "tonically active neurons" (TANs). Another hallmark ...

The mechanisms underlying social dysfunction in neuropsychiatric conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette syndrome (TS) remain uncertain. Dysfunctions in basal ganglia, including reduced number of ...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by a degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons that results in a hypercholinergic state in the striatum. This hypercholinergic state contributes to the clinical signs of ...

Pleiotrophin (PTN), a developmentally-regulated trophic factor, is over-expressed in the striatum of parkinsonian rats. Because striatal PTN can provide trophic support to dopamine neurons, we identified the cellular types ...

Before the advent of L-DOPA, the gold standard symptomatic therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD), anticholinergic drugs (muscarinic receptor antagonists) were the preferred antiparkinsonian therapy, but their unwanted side ...

Stroke is one of the leading causes of mortality in Brazil and in the world. It is one of the most common causes of functional disability and neurologic deficits in adults. There is evidence that the cholinergic system has ...

Drugs of abuse target the reward system and have one common action in the brain: increasing dopamine (DA) in the striatum. Recently, it was shown that the activation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) inputs can evoke DA transients ...