Crushing the nerve to the medial gastrocnemius (MG) muscle at birth and administering nerve growth factor to rats afterwards results in a reinnervated muscle with supernumerary muscle spindles, some of which must have formed de novo. Structure and…
NEUROTROPHIN-3 (NT3) or TrkC null mutant mice were examined for the presence of muscle spindles. Muscles of mastication, but not limbs, contained spindles in newborn and adolescent mutants. The intramuscular distribution and morphological properties…
The effects of a deficiency of neurotrophin-3 on spinal motor neurons were assessed by determining the number of myelinated nerve fibers in lumbar ventral spinal roots of mice with a deletion in the neurotrophin-3 gene. Few or no small-caliber…
ER81, a member of the ETS family of transcription factors, is essential for the formation of connections between sensory and motor neurons in the spinal cord. Mice lacking Er81 genes exhibit reduced monosynaptic sensory-motoneuron connectivity in…
Depletion of dopamine (DA) reduces D, receptor number, but D-3 receptor expression is also regulated by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). We took advantage of transgenic heterozygous BDNF mutant mice (+/-) to determine if reduced BDNF and…
The influence of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) upon the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system was evaluated in weanling and adult mice carrying a targeted inactivated BDNF gene. Regional specificity of this BDNF mutation was assessed by…
The effects of a deletion for the brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) allele (+/- BDNF) upon age-related changes in nigrostriatal dopaminergic (NSDA) function were assessed. Behavioral (beam crossing and spontaneous activity) and neurochemical…
Deletion of a single copy of the BDNF gene has been shown to affect the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system of young adult BDNF mice. In the present report we evaluated various indices of nigrostriatal dopaminergic function between
