Endocannabinoid-mediated rescue of striatal LTD and motor deficits in Parkinson's disease models

Anatol C. Kreitzer and Robert C. Malenka ()
Additional contact information
Anatol C. Kreitzer: Stanford University Medical School
Robert C. Malenka: Stanford University Medical School

Nature, 2007, vol. 445, issue 7128, 643-647

Abstract: Endocannabinoid targets Imbalances in activity levels between two neuronal pathways in the brain's striatum, the 'direct' and 'indirect' motor pathways, have been proposed to underlie motor deficits seen in Parkinson's disease. A study of transgenic mice reveals important differences in the two neuronal subpopulations involved. Specifically, a prominent form of synaptic plasticity in the striatum, endocannabinoid-mediated long-term depression (eCB-LTD), is expressed only by neurons of the indirect pathway. In a mouse model of Parkinson's disease, 'rescue' of eCB-LTD by treatment with a dopamine D2 receptor agonist and an inhibitor of endocannabinoid degradation greatly improved motor performance. This suggests that a major role for dopamine in the striatum is to promote eCB-LTD at indirect pathway synapses. Drugs targeting endocannabinoid degradation could represent a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05506 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:445:y:2007:i:7128:d:10.1038_nature05506

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature05506

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().