Effects of cortical activity on medium sized spiny neurons in dopamine-depleted contexts
October 2017
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Parkinson's disease is a major neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons that innervate the striatum. There is evidence that the overexposure of medium-sized spiny neurons to cortical glutamatergic input induces a loss of dendritic spines and dendritic length, proposed as a mechanism to protect these neurons from excess excitatory inputs. However, there is a lack of consistency in the degeneration of dendritic components in medium-sized spiny neurons in experimental conditions. To solve this, the researchers propose a computational model to investigate the amount of dendritic spines and dendritic arborization loss to restore the normal regulatory function of the basal ganglia. The results showed that dendritic spine loss and/or dendritic trees could restore normal activity in specific dopamine level conditions through different mechanisms. Furthermore, the model allowed to explore the effects of cortical activity on the morphology of medium-sized spiny neurons in dopamine-depleted conditions and it elucidated that the manipulation of cortical activity can stop the degeneration of dendrites. In this study, a new updated model is developed to propose a potential therapeutical strategy through the manipulation of cortical inputs into medium-sized spiny neurons in Parkinson's disease and dopamine depletion context to stop dendritic degeneration.
The effects of medium spiny neuron morphologcial changes on basal ganglia network under external electric field: a computational modeling study
Shenquan Liu
Added on: 09-30-2021
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00091[2] https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/a8fd26ef-b113-47ab-92ba-fd2be449c7eb
