Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 487, Issue 3, 10 January 2011, Pages 264-267
Neuroscience Letters

Quadri-pulse stimulation (QPS) induced LTP/LTD was not affected by Val66Met polymorphism in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2010.10.034Get rights and content

Abstract

It has been reported that the brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has some functional roles in inducing plasticity in the adult human brain and the Val66Met BDNF polymorphism affects the plasticity induction. In contrast, some long lasting effects were not fully induced in subjects with non-Val–Val polymorphism. In this communication, we retrospectively investigated whether this polymorphism affects the plastic changes induced by a newly developed stimulation method (quadripulse stimulation (QPS)) in 12 subjects. Both long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) like effects were induced by QPS for 30 min in any types of BDNF Val66Met polymorphisms. This finding presents a striking contrast to the previous results, which showed reduced long-term effects elicited by some other induction methods in subjects with non-Val–Val polymorphism. Although we are not able to make a final conclusion about the effect of Val66Met BDNF polymorphism on QPS because of the small number of subjects studied, QPS may be less affected by the BDNF polymorphism than several other protocols for inducing LTP/LTD-like effects in humans. Several possibilities may explain this difference. One candidate possibility is that QPS may be long enough for inducing the late LTP/LTD like effect whereas the other stimulation methods may be long enough for early but not enough for late LTP/LTD like effect. It is conspicuous that the QPS for 30 min does elicit stable bidirectional long-term effects even in subjects with non-Val–Val polymorphism of BDNF.

Research highlights

▶ QPS induces bidirectional plastic changes in the human motor cortex. ▶ QPS induces LTP/LTD similarly in any types of Val66Met BDNF polymorphism. ▶ QPS is superior to other stimulations because it is unaffected by the BDNF polymorphism. ▶ QPS may have much clinical utility because of its stable long term effects.

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Disclosures statement

This work is partly supported by Research Project Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research No. 20591019(RH) and No. 22390181 (YU), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan; the Research Committee on best rTMS Treatment of Parkinson's Disease, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan (RH, YU); the Research Committee on Dystonia, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan (YU); the Committee of the Study of Human Exposure to EMF, Ministry of Public Management,

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