It has been suggested that the neurons of prefrontal cortex, along with the hippocampus and amygdala, can undergo morphological and molecular remodeling during the development of stress-related disorders, such as PTSD. Pathological remodeling of the GABAergic inhibitory signalling during stress disorders might bring significant contribution to impairment of synaptic plasticity and cognition. In this work we have used an experimental model of PTSD in mice, based on a single prolonged stress protocol and studied alterations in the synaptic transmission and long-term synaptic plasticity in the pyramidal neurons of prefrontal cortex. The stress state in the animals was evaluated with the aid of open field and elevated cross-maze behavioral tests. We have found an increase in the quantal amplitude of GABAergic spontaneous inhibitory synaptic currents (mIPSCs) in the neurons of prefrontal cortex of stressed animals. There was also elevation in the frequency of mIPSCs in neurons of the stressgroup vs control group. These results demonstrate that that exposure to stress can cause an up-regulation of the GABAergic inhibitory system in the prefrontal cortex. In the experiments on long-term potentiation (LTP) of field postsynaptic potentials (fEPSP), we have observed that the amplitude of LTP induced by the theta-burst stimulation in the prefrontal cortex synapses of stressed mice was much lower than in the control group. The data obtained suggest that stress-induced up-regulation of inhibitory signalling can affect long-term synaptic plasticity in the prefrontal cortex and thereby contribute to cognitive impairment.

Sleep and wakefulness are important physiological manifestations of brain, even for clinicians. Review on Physiology of Sleep includes wakefulness as they are interchangeable, interdependent states. On discussion with introduction to sleep which includes sleep cycle; types of sleep; sleep waves neurotransmitters, pathways, circuits and receptors are summarised. Role of higher centres, parts of brain and other factors (steroid, biological rhythm, aging etc) are reviewed. Its implication in various sleep disorders and recent advances in neurophysiology related to sleep are described.

Many schizophrenic patients, who are treated with antipsychotic drug, do not adhere to the pharmacotherpy. Antipsychotic drugs constitute a palliative treatment, and their long-term administration is not secure. Instead of following the pharmacotherapy, some patients tend to consume alcohol and tobacco, and even amphetamines and cannabis. The reason of the patients to not adhere to the pharmacotherapy will be discussed, and the effect of alcohol, tobacco and drugs on the disease outcome will be addressed. Appropriate measures to make the patients to renounce of substances and drugs and to improve the patients’ adherence to the pharmcotherapy will be described. Alterations of classical neurotransmitters in the hippocampus, mesolimbic system and prefrontal cortex will be mentioned. The different compounds of cannabis, tetrahydrocannabidiol (a psychotomimetic) and cannabidiol (exerts antipsychotic actions). The effect of alcohol, tobacco and drugs to worsen the antipsychotic treatment will be pointed out. Appropriate measures to improve the antipsychotic pharmacotherapy and to reduce the consumption of substances and drugs are the administration of long-acting injectable antipsychotic drugs and psychoeducation and cognitive behavioral therapy Some new drugs, for example the cannabis compound cannabidiol that shows antipsychotic properties and ß-varenicline, a nicotinergic cholinergic agonist, might be administered when substance abuse (cannabis, nicotine) occurs.

Major depression is a frequent psychiatric disease, which is mainly treated by different antidepressant drugs. However, one third of the depressive patients remain treatment-resistant. In major depression, in the brainstem, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, alterations of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides and the belonging neural networks are updated. Starting from these findings, novel antidepressant drugs and combination of different antidepressant drugs are suggested. In the prefrontal cortex, glutamatergic neurons, which receive a postsynaptic excitatory potential from D2 dopaminergic neurons, exert a presynaptic inhibition upon M1 muscarinic cholinergic neurons via NMDA receptors. Medium spiny GABAergic/somatostatin neurons, which receive projections from M1 muscarinic cholinergic neurons, presynaptically inhibit D2 dopaminergic neurons via GABAA/somatostatin1 receptors. The combination of an NMDA receptor antagonist, for example ketamine with an M1 muscarinic cholinergic receptor antagonist, for example scopolamine, exert a rapid, long-lasting antidepressant effect. In preclinical studies, the antidepressant effect of orvepitant, an NK1 receptor antagonist, has been demonstrated: this antagonist reaches a complete antagonism of NK1 receptors. In clinical studies, the combination of an NMDA receptor antagonist with an M1 muscarinic cholinergic receptor antagonist should be investigated indepth as well as the therapeutic effect of orvepitant. In clinical studies, the antidepressant effect of a triple reuptake inhibitor should be examined and compared to current antidepressant drugs. The superior therapeutic effect of antidepressant drugs like venlafaxine, a selective noradrenaline and serotonin reuptake inhibitor and bupropion, a selective dopamine and nordrenaline reuptake inhibitor and their adverse effects will be pointed out. Non-pharmacological measures to enhance the antidepressant effect will also be discussed.

Vessel segmentation is a challenging problem in medical image segmentation, as it requires knowing the location of each tiny blood vessel and understanding the global semantic information. Previous method has demonstrated that long-range dependencies information plays an important role in understanding global segmentation information. To capture long-range dependencies information, researchers often use non-local structure. However, it requires too much computing power and a large amount of GPU memory. In this paper, we present a deformed non-local (DNL) neural network structure for retinal vessel segmentation. DNL inherits the structure of the Non-local module, but it changes the operation rules of nonlocal weight matrix multiplication, which can greatly reduce the problem of excessive computation and memory usage. Meanwhile, we introduce the atrous spatial pyramid pooling module to increase the receptive field of the networks, which showed that it is effective to resample features at different scales for accurately and efficiently classifying regions of an arbitrary scale. The proposed method was evaluated on retinal vessel datasets and experimental results show that it outperforms state-of-the-art methods. For a 128 × 128 input, DNL is around 2.5 times faster than a non-local block on GPU.

Background and Aim: Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with progressive degeneration of hippocampal and cortical neurons that leads to memory loss. Overexpression and production of amyloid-beta (Aβ) is the most significant factor in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Recent studies have found a role for the gut microbiota in the gut-brain axis, which can affect cognitive and memory abilities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of lactobacilli on the spatial memory and expression of APP gene in the hippocampus of Aluminum chloride (AlCl₃) induced animal model of Alzheimer's disease.

Methods: Adult male wistar rats weighing (240–250 g) were used. Animals received either saline, Alcl₃ (100 mg/kg), lactobacilli, or lactobacilli plus ALCL₃ by oral gavage for 42 days. Lactobacilli contained L.plantarum, L.rhamnosus, and L.reuteri. Morris water maze test was used for evaluating spatial memory. After completion of the behavioral test, animals were sacrificed and hippocampi dissected, and stored at -80°C. Finally, the level of APP gene expression was evaluated by Real-Time PCR.

Results: Our results indicated that ALCL₃ significantly impaired spatial memory and intensified hippocampal APP gene expression. Pre-treatment with lactobacilli improved memory in control rats and prevented memory and APP deterioration in ALCL₃ treated rats.

Discussion: lactobacilli used in this study can prevent destructive effect of AlCl₃ on memory and can introduce as a way to prevent Alzheimer's disease, possibly via decreasing APP gene expression. However, more investigations are necessary to know related cellular and molecular mechanisms.

Many endocrine regulators are widely expressed and secreted in the brain, and play important neuromodulatory roles in physiological and pathological processes such as brain development, brain function protection, and brain injury repair. In addition, many endocrine regulators undergo significant changes in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of neurological diseases and can be used as biological markers for early diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of diseases. In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding the effects of endocrine modulators on pediatric neurological diseases, especially epilepsy, dravet syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and ADHD. These advances stem from a series of research advances on specific endocrine regulators such as melatonin, leptin and ghrelin, as well as ketogenic diet (KD) . KD is a nutritional therapy that has been found to be beneficial against refractory epilepsy, and has also been proposed to treat many other neurological disorders. Recently, we opened a column in the magazine “Frontiers in Endocrinology” in collaboration with scholars from Italy and India: "Endocrine Modulators of Neurological Processes: Potential Treatment Targets of Pediatric Neurological Diseases". Here, we summarize the new progress of the articles published in the column, hoping to provide useful clues for future research.

objective: To determine the efficacy of short-interval program of constraint-induced movement therapy on hand function training in asymmetric hand impairment cerebral palsy.

Study design: Randomized single-blinded controlled trial study.

Subjects: Asymmetric hand impairment cerebral palsy in Srisangwal School, Foundation for the Welfare of the Crippled System.

Methods: Sixteen cerebral palsy spastic triplegia (8-14 years old) were assigned randomly to either CIMT or control group. Both groups participated in occupational therapy program for 1 hour per day, 5 days per week for 8 weeks. CIMT group wore slings on their less impaired arms during therapy session and the slings were removed at the end of each session. To assess the effect of hand function of participants by the Jebsen-Taylor Test of Hand Function, counting the number of the coins that patient was able to put in the box within 3 minutes and stereognosis before training and after training for 8 weeks.

Results: Sixteen cerebral palsy spastic triplegia were divided equally into two groups. One participant in the control group was dropped out from the study because he had surgical intervention in his impaired arm. There was statistically significant (P< 0.05) improvement of hand function by Jebsen- Taylor Test of Hand Function and counting the amounts of the coins in the box within 3 minutes after training for 8 weeks in CIMT group but there was no significance in control group.

Conclusion: CIMT is efficacious to improve fine motor function in asymmetric hand impairment cerebral palsy.

M editation had long been believed to possess a multitude of putative beneficial effects which it could bestow upon it’s practitioner, but it was not until the 1960’s that scientific exploration into the process began. Rigorous increase in randomized controlled trials on mindful interventions has been observed in past two decades. It has been shown, with increasing evidence, to harbor a myriad of positive effects, a few including, but not limited to, stress reduction, cognition enhancement, an increase in memory, boosted intelligence, etc. Such profound positive influences have led to it being rather commonly deployed to promote general health and treat stress and stress related conditions. Meditative modalities are broadly classified as those stressing on mindfulness, concentration or automated self-transcendence. Certain popular modalities such as transcendental meditation follow the use of a mantra such that one transcends to a state where focused attention is absent. In contrast, others such as mindfulness-based stress reduction are based on present focused awareness or mindfulness. While it is not clear if these differences influence the result of practice, all classes are broadly considered ‘meditation’ and studied as such. The session shall evaluate the increasing evidence of mindfulness intervention by reviewing and discussing the effects of indfulness interventions on boosting memory, recall, learning and reducing stress levels along with the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of such interventions. This shall provide a robust understanding of the process involved in benefits of practicing mindfulness.

Problem Based Learning (PBL) in Medical Education was introduced almost 50 years ago by McMaster University. In this teaching and learning strategy students work as a team to solve complex real-world clinical problems. This introduction had a ripple effect far beyond the confines of the Medical Education. Today hundreds of medical schools worldwide have adopted this strategy utilizing integrated system approach. King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University of Health Sciences opened its door for the first batch in 2004 in its Riyadh Campus and in 2010 at its Jeddah campus. University of Sydney PBL integrated curriculum was employed and over the years it has been gradually amended to suit local needs. It’s a six-year, three phase programme. In Phase I, emphasis is on English language and strengthening the Basic Sciences including Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Immunology, Pharmacology, Ethics and introduction to contextual, integrated Problem Based Learning. In Phase II, students apply their Basic Medical Sciences knowledge (Anatomy, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Physiology, and Pathology) in a system based, contextual process revolving around Clinical cases. Didactic lectures are used to reinforce learning from the PBL. Moreover, learning is strengthened by relevant Clinical Skills sessions. In the Phase III, students go through Clinical rotations in various clinical disciplines, learn clinical skills on real patients as well as on state-of-the-art mannequins and apply their Basic Medical Sciences knowledge to solve clinical cases. In this presentation we have concentrated on Neuropysiology teaching and learning in Phase II.