Different doses of Hippocampus and Hippo campus - pinax ginseng were administrated orally in a 2 week course continuously did not make any change on the normal structure of seminal epithelial and testis interstitial gland of rat. There was no significant difference of seminal vesiles's average diameter in all rat' drug taken group. However this diameter was higher significantly than normal. The percentage of seminal vesicles, in which sperm reproduction was completed, was increased significantly in all drug taken groups compared to the control.
Panax ; Hippocampus ; anatomy & histology

A novel medical automatic image segmentation strategy based on guided filtering and multi-atlas is proposed to achieve accurate, smooth, robust, and reliable segmentation. This framework consists of 4 elements: the multi-atlas registration, which uses the atlas prior information; the label fusion, in which the similarity measure of the registration is used as the weight to fuse the warped label; the guided filtering, which uses the local information of the target image to correct the registration errors; and the threshold approaches used to obtain the segment result. The experimental results showed part among the 15 brain MRI images used to segment the hippocampus region, the proposed method achieved a median Dice coefficient of 86% on the left hippocampus and 87.4% on the right hippocampus. Compared with the traditional label fusion algorithm, the proposed algorithm outperforms the common brain image segmentation methods with a good efficiency and accuracy.
Algorithms ; Hippocampus ; anatomy & histology ; Humans ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Neuroimaging ; Software

OBJECTIVE: To detect the effects of metformin on the depressive-like behaviors in rats. METHODS: Forty male SD rats were randomly divided into four groups: control group (CON group), metformin group (MET group), model group (CUMS group), model + metformin group (CUMS + MET group), 10 rats in each group. Chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) method was used to establish rat depression model in three weeks. After the model was established successfully, two metformin groups were intraperitoneally injected with metformin (100 mg/kg), while the control group and the model group were injected with the same amount of saline once a day for two weeks. After that, the changes of weight gain, sucrose water preference experiment, forced swimming test, tail suspension immobility test and open field test were detected. The morphological changes of hippocampus were observed by Nissl staining. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the weight gain of rats in CUMS group was significantly slowed down (P＜0.05), the sucrose preference rate and the spontaneous activity were significantly reduced (P＜0.05), and the immobility time in forced swimming and tail suspension immobility test was significantly prolonged (P＜0.05), and the morphological structure of hippocampus was changed, which confirmed the success of CUMS depression model. Compared with CUMS group, metformin treatment had no significant effect on body weight of rats, but it could significantly improve sucrose water intake, immobility time and spontaneous activity of CUMS depression model rats (P＜0.05), and improve the abnormal morphological changes of hippocampus in CUMS rats. CONCLUSION Metformin has a therapeutic benefit against CUMS-induced depression, which provides a new treatment for patients with diabetes mellitus complicated with depression.
Animals ; Depression ; drug therapy ; Hippocampus ; anatomy & histology ; drug effects ; Male ; Metformin ; pharmacology ; Random Allocation ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Stress, Psychological

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is widely used to study white and gray matter (GM) micro-organization and structural connectivity in the brain. Super-resolution track-density imaging (TDI) is an image reconstruction method for dMRI data, which is capable of providing spatial resolution beyond the acquired data, as well as novel and meaningful anatomical contrast that cannot be obtained with conventional reconstruction methods. TDI has been used to reveal anatomical features in human and animal brains. In this study, we used short track TDI (stTDI), a variation of TDI with enhanced contrast for GM structures, to reconstruct direction-encoded color maps of fixed tree shrew brain. The results were compared with those obtained with the traditional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) method. We demonstrated that fine microstructures in the tree shrew brain, such as Baillarger bands in the primary visual cortex and the longitudinal component of the mossy fibers within the hippocampal CA3 subfield, were observable with stTDI, but not with DTI reconstructions from the same dMRI data. The possible mechanisms underlying the enhanced GM contrast are discussed.
Animals ; Brain Mapping ; Diffusion Tensor Imaging ; methods ; Hippocampus ; diagnostic imaging ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Male ; Neural Pathways ; diagnostic imaging ; Tupaiidae ; anatomy & histology ; Visual Cortex ; diagnostic imaging

OBJECTIVETo investigate morphological changes of capillary in aging brain and explore the role of vascular factor in brain aging.

METHODSTwenty-eight brains of individuals (mean age 65 years) who died without clinical or pathological involvement of nervous system and 6 brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients (mean age 83 years) were obtained at autopsy. Sections from frontal lobe, occipital lobe, striatum and hippocampus of normal subjects and sections from hippocampus of AD patients were used for hematoxylin eosin (HE), lox fast blue (LFB), toluidine blue stains and ulex europaeus agglutinin (UEA) immunostaining. After observations of morphological changes of neuron and capillary, computer-aid image analysis was performed to quantify numerical density and area density of neuron and capillary in frontal lobe, occipital lobe, putamen, CA3 sector of normal subjects and CA3 sector of AD patients. Numerical ratio and area ratio of neuron and capillary were then calculated. Correlations between neuron/capillary ratio and age were estimated using Pearson's correlation test. Difference of neuron/capillary ratio in CA3 sectors between AD patients and advanced aged normal subjects (> 75 years) was analyzed with Student's t-test.

RESULTSSeveral pathological microvascular changes, including increased tortuosity, looping, bundling, stringing, and effacement of endothelia were seen in aged subjects and more prevalent in AD patients. Numerical ratio and area ratio of neuron and capillary of frontal lobe, occipital lobe and putamen significantly increased with age in normal aging subjects.

CONCLUSIONSMorphological changes and relative decrease in number and capacity of capillary in aging brain may reduce cerebral blood flow and metabolism, and consequently result in functional impairment of aging brain. Vascular factors may play an important role in the development of brain aging.

Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Aging ; Alzheimer Disease ; etiology ; pathology ; Capillaries ; anatomy & histology ; pathology ; Cell Count ; Cerebral Cortex ; blood supply ; pathology ; Female ; Frontal Lobe ; blood supply ; pathology ; Hippocampus ; blood supply ; pathology ; Humans ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Neurons ; pathology ; Occipital Lobe ; blood supply ; pathology

Kainic acid (KA) is well-known as an excitatory, neurotoxic substance. In mice, KA administered intracerebroventricularly (i.c.v.) lead to morphological damage of hippocampus expecially concentrated on the CA3 pyramidal neurons. In the present study, the possible role of gamma-aminobutyric acid B (GABA B) receptors in hippocampal cell death induced by KA (0.1 microgram) administered i.c.v. was examined. 5-Aminovaleric acid (5-AV; GABA B receptors antagonist, 20 microgram) reduced KA-induced CA3 pyramidal cell death. KA increased the phosphorylated extracellular signal-regulated kinase (p-ERK) and Ca2+ /calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (p-CaMK II) immunoreactivities (IRs) 30 min after KA treatment, and c-Fos, c-Jun IR 2 h, and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), complement receptor type 3 (OX-42) IR 1 day in hippocampal area in KA-injected mice. 5-AV attenuated KA-induced p-CaMK II, GFAP and OX-42 IR in the hippocampal CA3 region. These results suggest that p-CaMK II may play as an important regulator on hippocampal cell death induced by KA administered i.c.v. in mice. Activated astrocytes, which was presented by GFAP IR, and activated microglia, which was presented by the OX-42 IR, may be a good indicator for measuring the cell death in hippocampal regions by KA excitotoxicity. Furthermore, it showed that GABA B receptors appear to be involved in hippocampal CA3 pyramidal cell death induced by KA administered i.c.v. in mice.
Amino Acids, Neutral/pharmacology ; Animals ; Ca(2+)-Calmodulin Dependent Protein Kinase/metabolism ; Cell Death/drug effects ; Extracellular Signal-Regulated MAP Kinases/metabolism ; Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein/metabolism ; Hippocampus/anatomy & histology/*cytology/*drug effects ; Kainic Acid/*toxicity ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred ICR ; Mossy Fibers, Hippocampal/drug effects/metabolism ; Phosphorylation/drug effects ; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos/metabolism ; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-jun/metabolism ; Receptors, GABA-B/*metabolism ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't