Symposium 2: New insights into synaptic plasticity. Talk title: ?Psychostimulant-induced alterations on thalamic GABAergic plasticity?

URBANO FJ

CABA

Conferencia; 2nd International Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies (FALAN) & XXX Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN); 2016

2nd International Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies (FALAN) & XXX Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN)

2016. 2nd International Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies (FALAN) & XXX Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias (SAN)Title: "Psychostimulant-induced alterations on thalamic GABAergic plasticity". Speaker: Dr. Francisco J. Urbano PhD. Independent Research Scientist, Assistant Professor, Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE-CONICET-UBA), Ciudad Universitaria, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.The effects of cocaine on thalamic GABAergic transmission resemble those described in several psychiatric and neurological pathologies included in the thalamocortical dysrhythmia syndrome, characterized by an anomalous coherence between high and low EEG frequencies. The presence of low frequencies in awake individuals is thought to cause aberrant processing of sensory inputs. Our group has compared cocaine and methylphenidate on synaptic transmission during repetitive stimulation. We found that cocaine administration, either acute or sub-chronic, led to an increase in paired pulse ratio values during electrical stimulation of GABAergic afferent to ventrobasal neurons at either 10 Hz or 40 Hz. Furthermore, only cocaine sub-chronic administration induced changes in 10 Hz/10 pulse trains of stimulation. Comparatively, the effects of methylphenidate are subtle, suggesting the existence of a cocaine-mediated serotonergic modulation of the inhibitory synapse between the thalamic reticular nucleus and the Ventrobasal nucleus.