NMDA receptor

Dr. Gregory House is a 55-year-old single man; he lives in an apartment by himself and is the head of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Dr. Houses’ father was abusive in some instances he would make House take a cold bath and sleep outside thus leading to a very strained relationship between the two. Additionally, Dr. Houses ' relationship with his mother was tainted by her cheating on his father. In his mid-30’s, Dr. House suffered an infarction in his leg…

Potassium channels (KC) are selective transmembrane proteins that allow K+ ions flow down an electrochemical gradient across cell membrane, thus controlling plasma membrane potential in both excitable and non-excitable cells (Szabo, Zoratti&Gulbins, 2010). Evolutionarily conserved KC family is one of the larges and most diverse of ion channels (Table1). Its diversity comes not only from a large number of genes coding for main subunits (over 80 mammalian genes). Many other processes such as…

Ketamine is classified as a general anesthetic, and has conventionally been used as such since its FDA approval in 19701. It is a noncompetitive NMDA antagonist that blocks glutamate and produces a cataleptic state, or a state of trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body. It dissociates the limbic and thalamocortical systems, effectively dissociating the CNS from outside stimuli. Per the manufacturer’s package insert, it is to be dosed by…

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that affects approximately 23.6 million people globally (Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 Collaborators, 2015). The disorder is marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, which typically result in problems related to self-care and general functioning in social and occupational settings (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Despite the first detailed clinical description having been written in 1810 (Haslam, 1810), and…

Imagine forgetting where you placed things, what the date is, where you are at, or even what your own name is; that is a daily problem that people living with Alzheimer’s disease experience. I chose to learn more about this disease due to the many people I have grown to love and had to see deal with this disease in their later years of life. Also, I have volunteered at SpiritTrust Lutheran Retirement Community for several weeks each summer for the past three or four years and working with some…

The Effects of Mefloquine (an antimalarial pill) on Mice Cognitive and Deficits in Olfactory Bulb. Mena Mekail Introduction to Scientific Research December 8, 2015 Introduction Worldwide air travel has seen a great increase in recent years, in fact it is projected that 1.45 billion people are expected to travel by air in 2016 (Huang and Tatem 2013). The increase of travel rate from malaria free and endemic countries has led to the increase of antimalarial drug resistance consumption…

4.1 Introduction: Stress is one of the most prevalent and life-threatening forms of mental illness affecting more than one fifth of the world’s population. It is always related to alterations of signaling pathways mainly the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (Mikhai et al, 2014). Rat models are an obligatory tool to study the etiology and progression of behavioural and biochemical changes induced by oxidative stress. Restraint stress produces an imbalance between oxidants and antioxidants…

Our logic for choosing kinesin for developing CNS therapeutics is based upon our own research, which found that kinesins are transcriptionally upregulated during memory storage and that they are both necessary and sufficient to induce long-term memory storage (LTM) in the marine snail, Aplysia californica (Puthanveettil et al., 2008; Fig 1). Furthermore, other researchers have also discovered that an increase in specific kinesin function in the mouse forebrain improves working memory (Wong et al…

of the neurotransmitter. The outcome is a reduction in cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms, making early detection the key factor in maximize drug efficacy (Ramachandran, Dhanaraju & Sanjay, 2013, p.1.). Memantine, a N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist drug, blocks glutamate (an excitory neurotransmitter) in the brain. Memantine targets moderate to severe AD patients, but not all AD patients are suitable for the drug (MIMS online, 2016). Alternatively, symptoms can be treated…