VALENTE , Pierluigi

Synapsins are a family of synaptic vesicle phosphoproteins regulating synaptic transmission and plasticity. SYN1/2 genes are major epilepsy susceptibility genes in humans. Consistently, synapsin I/II/III triple knockout (TKO) mice are epileptic and exhibit severe impairments in phasic and tonic GABAergic inhibition that precede the appearance...

Cultured hippocampal neurons represent the most widely used experimental substrate for in vitro electrophysiological studies. Nevertheless, in most cases, the nature of neuron under study is not identified as excitatory or inhibitory, or even worse, recorded neurons are considered as excitatory because of the paucity of GABAergic interneurons....

Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) channels are non-selective cationic polymodal receptors gated by several different chemical and physical stimuli. TRPV1 receptors are distributed in several brain areas and interact with important neurotransmitter systems linked to mental disorders, such as endocannabinoid and opioid systems. The...