Lithium engages autophagy for neuroprotection and neuroplasticity: translational evidence for therapy

Prefrontal Dopamine in Flexible Adaptation to Environmental Changes: A Game for Two Players

Deficits in cognitive flexibility have been characterized in affective, anxiety, and neurodegenerative disorders. This paper reviews data, mainly from studies on animal models, that support the existence of a cortical-striatal brain circuit modulated by dopamine (DA), playing a major role in cognitive/behavioral flexibility. Moreover, we reviewed clinical findings supporting misfunctioning of this circuit in Parkinson's disease that could be responsible for some important non-motoric symptoms. The reviewed findings point to a role of catecholaminergic transmission in the medial prefrontal cortex (mpFC) in modulating DA's availability in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), as well as a role of NAc DA in modulating the motivational value of natural and conditioned stimuli. The review section is accompanied by a preliminary experiment aimed at testing weather the extinction of a simple Pavlovian association fosters increased DA transmission in the mpFC and inhibition of DA transmission in the NAc.

Bibliometric analysis and visualized study of research on autophagy in ischemic stroke

Aims: To summarize and clarify the current research status and indicate possible future directions in the field of autophagy in ischemic stroke, we performed a comprehensive and multidimensional bibliometric analysis of the literature in this field published from 2011 to 2022. Methods: We retrieved articles on the field of autophagy in ischemic stroke published between 2011 and 2022 from Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC). VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) and CiteSpace (version 6.2.R2 Basic) were used to identify the leading topics as well as generate visual maps of Countries/regions, organizations, authors, journals, and keyword networks in the related field. Results: A total of 568 publications were contained in this research. The journal with the most publications were Front Pharmacol, Mol Neurobiol, and Neuroscience. China was the most productive country with respect to co-authorship, with the Capital Med Univ being the organization with the most. co-authorships. In terms of authorship analysis, eight of the top 10 most contributive authors were from China. The co-occurring author keywords can be divided into three main clusters, including "protective effect of autophagy in ischemic stroke," "autophagy-targeted therapy for ischemic stroke," and "mitochondrial function in cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury". Conclusion: This bibliometric analysis helps us reveal the current research hotspots in the research field of autophagy in ischemic stroke and guide future research directions. Subsequent trends in this special field are likely to identify and develop novel autophagy-targeted therapy strategies to effectively prevent and treat ischemic stroke.