We have used live cell imaging of individual growth cones within the living zebrafish embryo to determine how Boc regulates the growth cone dynamics and axon guidance within the supraoptic tract. A plasmid construct encoding elavl3-eGFP was injected into early embryos to selectively label a small number of neurons while the expression of Boc was knocked Pexidartinib down by injection of antisense morpholino oligonucleotides. Time-lapse imaging of growth cones within the living embryos revealed that loss of Boc significantly affected the morphology of growth cones in comparison to axons within control embryos. Growth cones navigating
along the supraoptic tract in the absence of Boc extended significantly longer filopodia in the rostrocaudal direction. These results indicate that Boc acts to restrict axons and their filopodia within the narrow pathway of the supraoptic tract. The highly selective nature of these pathfinding defects reveal that Boc is likely to be one of many molecules that coordinate the trajectory of axons within the supraoptic tract. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Background. Cannabis use is common in patients with recent-onset schizophrenia and this is associated with poor disease outcome. More insight in the cognitive-motivational processes
related to cannabis use in schizophrenia may inform treatment strategies. The present study is the first known to compare implicit and explicit check details cannabis associations in individuals with and without psychotic disorder.
Method. Tozasertib Participants consisted of 70 patients with recent-onset psychotic disorder and 61 healthy controls with various levels of cannabis use. Three Single-Category
Implicit Association Tests (SC-IAT) were used to assess ‘relaxed’, ‘active’ and ‘negative’ implicit associations towards cannabis use. Explicit expectancies of cannabis use were assessed with a questionnaire using the same words as the SC-IAT.
Results. There were no differences in implicit associations between patients and controls; however, patients scored significantly higher on explicit negative affect expectancies than controls. Both groups demonstrated strong negative implicit associations towards cannabis use. Explicit relaxed expectancies were the strongest predictors of cannabis use and craving. There was a trend for implicit active associations to predict craving.
Conclusions. The findings indicate that patients suffering from schizophrenia have associations towards cannabis similar to controls, but they have stronger negative explicit cannabis associations. The strong negative implicit associations towards cannabis could imply that users of cannabis engage in a behaviour they do not implicitly like. Explicit relaxing expectancies of cannabis might be an important mediator in the continuation of cannabis use in patients and controls.