Endocrine, metabolic & immune disorders drug targets
April 29, 2025
Meng Wang, Qian Ma, Wenjuan Wang et al.
1 citation
Esketamine reduced acute lung injury caused by limb ischemia-reperfusion in a rat model. Treatment lowered pulmonary edema, inflammatory cell infiltration, and oxidative stress, as shown by decreased MDA and increased SOD levels. It also reduced inflammatory cytokines in bronchoalveolar fluid and serum. The protective effect involved suppression of the TLR4/NF-κB/NLRP3 pathway; activating that pathway with LPS reversed esketamine's benefits. The findings suggest esketamine may be a potential therapy for acute lung injury.
Frontiers in neurology
January 1, 2025
Wenjia He, Xinyu Lyu, Hui Zhang et al.
In people with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), resting-state functional connectivity (FC) between brain regions involved in vestibular, motor, and sensory processing is abnormally elevated compared to healthy controls. After a canalith repositioning maneuver, whole-brain average FC strength decreased significantly, and connectivity between specific region pairs—including prefrontal cortex, occipital cortex, middle temporal gyrus, motor cortex, and somatosensory cortex—returned to normal levels. Clinical symptoms also improved: the Dizziness Handicap Inventory score dropped by 23.4% and the Visual Analogue Scale score showed a significant reduction. The findings suggest BPPV involves compensatory enhancement of the vestibulo-sensorimotor network, and that repositioning therapy restores pathologically enhanced FC to normal, supporting functional near-infrared spectroscopy as a potential objective biomarker for evaluating BPPV neural mechanisms and treatment efficacy.
Nature communications
June 5, 2023
Ang Li, Haiyang Liu, Xu Lei et al.
Consciousness is linked to how neural activity shifts along a unimodal-transmodal cortical axis, a simple signature that is abnormally elevated under psychedelics and in psychosis. This hierarchical dynamic reflects changes in global brain integration and connectome diversity. Quasi-periodic patterns show hierarchical heterogeneity as spatiotemporally propagating waves tied to arousal, a pattern also seen in macaques. The spatial distribution of the principal cortical gradient aligns with genetic transcription of the histaminergic system and functional connectome mapping of the tuberomammillary nucleus, which promotes wakefulness. Combining behavioral, neuroimaging, electrophysiological, and transcriptomic evidence, the authors propose that global consciousness is supported by efficient hierarchical processing along a low-dimensional macroscale gradient.
Behavioural Brain Research
November 1, 2021
Haiyang Liu, Ke-Hui Hu, Yingjie Peng et al.
During dexmedetomidine-induced sedation, the brain's functional networks become more fragmented and dynamic, with increased switching rates and decreased integration compared to wakefulness; these changes largely reverse upon recovery of consciousness. The study tracked dynamic network reconfiguration using fMRI data from 21 healthy subjects and multilayer network analysis, comparing wakefulness, sedation, and recovery states. The findings suggest that altered states of consciousness involve a whole-brain pattern of higher modular dynamics and more fragmented communication, offering insights into the neural basis of consciousness and potential clinical relevance for disorders of consciousness.