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Chapter 9 Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors on hippocampal neurons: cell compartment-specific expression and modulatory control of channel activity

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Publisher Summary The neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are differentially expressed on the somato-dendritic surface of hippocampal neurons. This chapter demonstrates that various ions and drugs play a crucial role in modulating the activity of neuronal nAChRs. Considering the diversity of the neurotransmitter receptors and their binding sites and the diversity of substances, which can act simultaneously as a primary agonist of one receptor and an allosteric modulator of a different receptor, an enormous variety of combinatorial possibilities can be achieved in the brain giving rise to very complex neuronal networks. The characterization of the diversity of many receptors in the central nervous system (CNS), in addition to the very recent findings that functional neuronal nAChRs and N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors are expressed on the soma and the dendrites of hippocampal neurons and that Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , Pb 2+ , and drugs, such as amantadine, tricyclic antidepressants, and the anticonvulsant MK-801, can allosterically control the activation of both neuronal nAChRs and NMDA receptors.