Striatal Morphological and Functional Alterations Induced by Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is an insidious yet preventable cause of developmental disability. The prenatal stage is a critical period for brain development with the concurrence of high vulnerability to the acute and prolonged effects of PAE. There is substantial evidence from both human observations and laboratory experiments that PAE is a common risk factor that predisposes to an array of postnatal mental disorders, including emotional, cognitive, and motor deficits. Although it is well accepted that PAE causes substantial morbidity, available treatments are limited. One reason is the lack of sufficient understanding about the neuroalterations induced by PAE, and how these changes contribute to PAE-induced mental disorders. Among a number of brain structures that have been explored extensively in PAE, the striatum has attracted great attention in the last 20 years in the field of PAE neurobiology. Interestingly, in animal models, the striatum has been considered as a pivotal switch of brain dysfunction induced by PAE, such as addiction, anxiety, depression, and neurodegeneration. In this review, we focus on recent advances in the understanding of morphological and functional changes in brain regions related to alterations after PAE, in particular the striatum. Because this region is central for behavior, emotion and cognition, there is an urgent need for more studies to uncover the PAE-induced alterations at the circuit, neuronal, synaptic and molecular levels, which will not only improve our understanding of the neuroplasticity induced by PAE, but also provide novel biological targets to treat PAE-related mental disorders with translational significance

Unusual charge transport and spin response of doped bilayer triangular antiferromagnets

Within the t-J model, the charge transport and spin response of the doped bilayer triangular antiferromagnet are studied by considering the bilayer interaction. Although the bilayer interaction leads to the band splitting in the electronic structure, the qualitative behaviors of the physical properties are the same as in the single layer case. The conductivity spectrum shows the low-energy peak and unusual midinfrared band, the temperature dependent resistivity is characterized by the nonlinearity metallic-like behavior in the higher temperature range, and the deviation from the metallic-like behavior in the lower temperature range, and the commensurate neutron scattering peak near the half-filling is split into six incommensurate peaks in the underdoped regime, with the incommensurability increases with the hole concentration at lower dopings, and saturates at higher dopings.Comment: 8 pages, Revtex, five figures are include

Alpha-CIR Model with Branching Processes in Sovereign Interest Rate Modelling

We introduce a class of interest rate models, called the $\alpha$-CIR model, which gives a natural extension of the standard CIR model by adopting the $\alpha$-stable L{\'e}vy process and preserving the branching property. This model allows to describe in a unified and parsimonious way several recent observations on the sovereign bond market such as the persistency of low interest rate together with the presence of large jumps at local extent. We emphasize on a general integral representation of the model by using random fields, with which we establish the link to the CBI processes and the affine models. Finally we analyze the jump behaviors and in particular the large jumps, and we provide numerical illustrations