g. rivastigmine, based on the chemical structure of physostigmine from Physostigma venenosum). Although drug development from botanical origin is one aim, the use of plants as herbal medicines is still popular. Scientific evidence for efficacy and safety has been explored for many species, although more research is needed, particularly to identify active phytochemicals to produce standardised herbal products.

For Alzheimer’s disease (AD) there are relatively few drugs available to treat symptoms, and there is a lack of successful therapies that modulate disease progression. Since two of the currently licensed drugs for AD are based on natural products (galantamine and rivastigmine), it is not surprising that many plants are now being investigated as a potential source of new therapies for AD. This review discusses selleck inhibitor those plants that have ethnobotanical uses suggestive of alleviation of AD pathology and associated symptoms, for cognitive and for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). An emphasis is placed

on those plants MCC950 order that have shown some promising effects in clinical studies with dementia patients (e.g. Crocus sativus, Ginkgo biloba, Salvia species), but other plants and their phytochemicals showing relevant mechanistic effects for AD (e.g. Bacopa monnieri, Centella asiatica, Ptychopetalum olacoides) are also discussed.”
“A system’s wiring constrains its dynamics, yet modelling of neural structures often overlooks the specific networks formed by their neurons. We developed an approach for constructing anatomically realistic networks and reconstructed the GABAergic microcircuit formed by the medium spiny neurons (MSNs) and fast-spiking interneurons (FSIs) of the adult rat striatum. We grew dendrite and

axon models for these neurons and extracted probabilities for GSK923295 inhibitor the presence of these neurites as a function of distance from the soma. From these, we found the probabilities of intersection between the neurites of two neurons given their inter-somatic distance, and used these to construct three-dimensional striatal networks. The MSN dendrite models predicted that half of all dendritic spines are within 100 mu m of the soma. The constructed networks predict distributions of gap junctions between FSI dendrites, synaptic contacts between MSNs, and synaptic inputs from FSIs to MSNs that are consistent with current estimates. The models predict that to achieve this, FSIs should be at most 1% of the striatal population. They also show that the striatum is sparsely connected: FSI-MSN and MSN-MSN contacts respectively form 7% and 1.7% of all possible connections. The models predict two striking network properties: the dominant GABAergic input to a MSN arises from neurons with somas at the edge of its dendritic field; and FSIs are interconnected on two different spatial scales: locally by gap junctions and distally by synapses.