The novel object recognition memory: neurobiology, test procedure, and its modifications

Animal models of memory have been considered as the subject of many scientific publications at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. In humans, memory is often accessed through spoken or written language, while in animals, cognitive functions must be accessed through different kind of behaviors in many specific, experimental models of memory and learning. Among them, the novel object recognition test can be evaluated by the differences in the exploration time of novel and familiar objects. Its application is not limited to a field of research and enables that various issues can be studied, such as the memory and learning, the preference for novelty, the influence of different brain regions in the process of recognition, and even the study of different drugs and their effects. This paper describes the novel object recognition paradigms in animals, as a valuable measure of cognition. The purpose of this work was to review the neurobiology and methodological modifications of the test commonly used in behavioral pharmacology

Brain energy rescue:an emerging therapeutic concept for neurodegenerative disorders of ageing

The brain requires a continuous supply of energy in the form of ATP, most of which is produced from glucose by oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria, complemented by aerobic glycolysis in the cytoplasm. When glucose levels are limited, ketone bodies generated in the liver and lactate derived from exercising skeletal muscle can also become important energy substrates for the brain. In neurodegenerative disorders of ageing, brain glucose metabolism deteriorates in a progressive, region-specific and disease-specific manner — a problem that is best characterized in Alzheimer disease, where it begins presymptomatically. This Review discusses the status and prospects of therapeutic strategies for countering neurodegenerative disorders of ageing by improving, preserving or rescuing brain energetics. The approaches described include restoring oxidative phosphorylation and glycolysis, increasing insulin sensitivity, correcting mitochondrial dysfunction, ketone-based interventions, acting via hormones that modulate cerebral energetics, RNA therapeutics and complementary multimodal lifestyle changes

Probability Theory in Statistical Physics, Percolation, and Other Random Topics: The Work of C. Newman

In the introduction to this volume, we discuss some of the highlights of the research career of Chuck Newman. This introduction is divided into two main sections, the first covering Chuck's work in statistical mechanics and the second his work in percolation theory, continuum scaling limits, and related topics.Comment: 38 pages (including many references), introduction to Festschrift in honor of C.M. Newma

Tailoring polystyrene solid-phase synthesis resins: Incorporation of flexible cross-linkers

link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Soluble polymer bound cleavage reagents: A multipolymer strategy for the cleavage of tertiary amines from REM resin

(equation presented) Soluble polymer bound reagent 1 has been prepared to cleave tertiary amines from REM resin. Normally, amines cleaved from REM resin require extraction or chromatography to remove excess cleavage reagent and its byproducts. The solubility profile of non-crosslinked polystyrene (NCPS) based reagent 1 eliminates the need for such purification and allows for the direct isolation of a library of pure tertiary amines through simple filtration and concentration operations.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Polytetrahydrofuran cross-linked polystyrene resins for solid-phase organic synthesis

Currently, divinylbenzene cross-linked polystyrene (DVB-PS) is the polymer of choice for use in solid-phase organic synthesis (SPOS). While much research has been directed toward the optimization of linker groups for the attachment of compounds to the polymer, the development of new polymers themselves has been relatively neglected. In an attempt to overcome the shortcomings of DVB-PS and to develop new polymers with optimum properties for use in organic synthesis, we have prepared a series of polystyrene polymers that incorporate flexible polytetrahydrofuran (PTHF) based cross-linkers. The objective of incorporating PTHF into the polymers was to slightly increase the overall polarity of the polymer and thus render the resins more organic solvent-like. Since the degree to which a resin swells in and absorbs a particular solvent correlates to how well substrates attached to the polymer are solvated, we compared the swelling of our new resins to commercially available DVB-PS resins. In all cases, we found that our resins swelled to a much greater extent than do DVB-PS resins, and their use should therefore allow for SPOS reaction conditions that more closely mimic homogeneous solution-phase conditions. It was also found that the PTHF chain length of the cross-linker does not affect the level of swelling since all of our cross-linkers afford resins with comparable levels of increased swelling. Furthermore, we have examined the utility of our resins in directed ortho-metalation reactions and found that the increased swelling of our resins allows for isolation of reaction products in yields comparable to what is achieved using standard solution-phase conditions.link_to_subscribed_fulltex