Differential brain area vulnerability to long-term subcortical excitotoxic lesions
Abstract
To investigate the long-term effects of excitatory amino acid microinjections into the basal forebrain and its correlation with a possible Ca2+ imbalance associated with the excitotoxic process, ibotenic acid, mainly an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor agonist, and quisqualic acid, an agonist of non-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors, were injected into two regions rich in cholinergic neurons, namely the medial septal nucleus and the ventral globus pallidus. Within the globus pallidus but not within the medial septal nucleus, 13 days and one year postlesion, nerve cell death was associated with the appearance of calcium deposits within the large putative GABAergic pallidal neurons, being more pronounced in ibotenic acid than quisqualic acid-lesioned rats. An intermediate two month post-lesion study with alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid (AMPA) and ibotenic acid microinjections in globus pallidus demonstrated that the AMPA subtype of glutamate receptor may also be involved in this Ca2+ imbalance, together with the N-methyl-D-aspartate and metabotropic subtype receptors. Quisqualic acid lesions in globus pallidus and medial septum were associated with a substantial disappearance of cholinergic cell bodies and the...Continue Reading
References
Citations
Differential DNA damage in response to the neonatal and adult excitotoxic hippocampal lesion in rats
Bilateral lesions of the subthalamic nucleus induce multiple deficits in an attentional task in rats
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