Lab members:
Director: Dr. Ramón O. Bernabeu Ph.D.

Ph.D. students:
Pascual, Mariano(CONICET fellow)
Pastor, Verónica (CONICET fellow)
Kedikian, Ximena (ANPCYT fellow)

Colaboradores:
Dr. Jean Zwiller, Universite Louis Pasteur, France
Dra. Estela Andres, Universidad Católica, Chile
Dra. Cecilia Scorza, Instituto Clemente Estable, Uruguay
Dr. Pablo Schwarzbaum, UBA, Argentina.
Dra. Paula Faillace, UBA, Argentina.

Research:

The central problem of the drugs that generate addiction is the compulsive use and the lost of control on the apparently voluntary action to look for and to consume the drug. The addiction is a chronic disease, simply because even after a treatment or periods of long abstinence, the risk of the relapse remains high.
In our laboratory we studied some molecular mechanisms and neuronal circuits that can be involved in the persistence, compulsion and relapse to nicotine consumption, in brief we are interested in the long term changes induced by nicotine. We mainly studied two different types of mechanisms in the brain when is exposed it to nicotine: the neuronal adaptations, which are mainly homeostatic responses due to the stimulation with nicotine and the synaptic plasticity, which take to the association of stimuli that relate nicotine to learned specific behaviors.

Publications

(full list clic here)

• Pascual MA, Pastor V and Bernabeu R. Nicotine-conditioned place preference induced CREB phosphorylation and Fos expression in the adult rat brain. Psychopharmacology (in press)
• Bernabeu, R, Yang, T, Xie, Y, Mehta, B, Ma, YM, and Longo, M. (2006) Downregulation of the LAR protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor is associated with increased dentate gyrus neurogenesis and an increased number of granule cell layer neurons. Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience 31:723-38.
• Faillace M.P., Zwiller, J., Di Scala, G. and Bernabeu, R. (2006). Odor increases [3H]phorbol dibutyrate binding to protein kinase C in olfactory structures of the brain. Effect of entorhinal cortex lesion. Molecular Brain Research 1068(1):16-22.
• Bernabeu, R., Thiriet, N., Zwiller, J. and Di Scala, G. (2006). Lesion of the Lateral Entorhinal Cortex Amplifies Odor-Induced Expression of c-fos, junB, and zif 268 mRNA in Rat Brain. Synapse 59(3):135-143.
• Faillace MP, Bernabeu R and Korenbrot J. (2004) Functional maturation of cyclic-GMP gated ion channel protein requires an intact S4 structural motif. Journal of Biological Chemistry 279(21):22643-53
• Yang T, Bernabeu R, Zhang JS, Xie Y, Massa S, Yeo TT, Rempel H, Gum ET and Longo FM. (2003). LAR PTP receptor: a small ectodomain isoform functions as a homophilic ligand and promotes neurite outgrowth.J Neuroscie 23(8):3353-63
• Sharp FR, Liu J, Bernabeu R. (2002) Neurogenesis following brain ischemia. Brain Res Dev Brain Res 134(1-2):23-30
• Bernabeu, R and Sharp, FR (2000). NMDA and AMPA/kainite receptors modulate dentate neurogenesis and CA3 synapsin-I in normal and ischemic hippocampus. Journal of Cerebral Blood, Flow and Metabolism 20(12): 1669-1680
• Liu J., Bernabeu, R., and Sharp FR. (2000). Neurogenesis and gliogenesis in the postischemic brain. The Neuroscientist 6(5): 362-370
• Bernabeu, R., Di Scala, G., and Zwiller J. (2000). Odor regulates the expression of mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase gene hVH-5 in bilateral entorhinal cortex-lesioned rats. Mol. Brain Res. 75(1), 113-120

Mailing Address:
Laboratorio de Neurociencias - Departamento de Fisiología - Facultad de Medicina - UBA.
Paraguay 2155 (1121) 7mo piso, Buenos Aires - Argentina

Office Phone:
Lab Phone: 54 11 5950-9500 x 2148; Fax: 54 11 5950-9611
Email Address: rbernabeu@fmed.uba.ar