* An animal model mimicking pedunculopontine nucleus cholinergic degeneration in Parkinson's disease.
- A rostral brainstem structure, the pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN), is severely affected by Parkinson's disease (PD) pathology and is regarded a promising target for therapeutic deep-brain stimulation (DBS). However, understanding the PPN's role in PD and assessing the potential of DBS are hampered by the lack of a suitable model of PPN degeneration. Rats were rendered Parkinsonian through a unilateral substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) stereotaxic injection of the proteasome inhibitor Lactacystin, to investigate whether the lesion's pathological effects spread to impact the integrity of PPN cholinergic neurons which are affected in PD. At 5 weeks post-surgery, stereological analysis revealed that the lesion caused a 48 % loss of dopaminergic SNpc neurons and a 61 % loss of PPN cholinergic neurons, accompanied by substantial somatic hypotrophy in the remaining cholinergic neurons. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed T2 signal hyper-/hypointensity in the PPN of the injected hemisphere, respectively at weeks 3 and 5 post-lesion. Moreover, isolated PPN cholinergic neurons revealed no significant alterations in key autophagy mRNA levels, suggesting that autophagy-related mechanisms fail to protect the PPN against Lactacystin-induced cellular changes. Hence, the current results suggest that the Lactacystin PD model offers a suitable model for investigating the role of the PPN in PD.
=>役目, 役割, 任務, 職務, 役
Overview of noun role
The noun role has 4 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (34) function, office, part, role -- (the actions and activities assigned to or required or
expected of a person or group; "the function of a teacher"; "the government must do its part"; "play
its role")
2. (10) character, role, theatrical role, part, persona -- (an actor's portrayal of someone in a
play; "she played the part of Desdemona")
3. (8) function, purpose, role, use -- (what something is used for; "the function of an auger is to
bore holes"; "ballet is beautiful but what use is it?")
4. (6) role -- (normal or customary activity of a person in a particular social setting; "what is
your role on the team?")
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