Am working on a chemical that is likely to induce release of neurotransmitters in the brain of Wistar rats.The challenge is how to detect and quantify the neurotransmitters .Are there kits one can use or other procedures?
Hi Orji,
In vivo brain microdialysis is largely used to study "brain chemistry" and most likely the way to go in your situation, even though it requires scpeific skills and equipement. A review on this topic for your information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3083031/
Hope it helps! Norbert
You can also assess neurotransmitter by immunohistochemical method, once you know the neurotransmitter you will only need to get the antibody, and then process the tissue normally and intensity of staining can be evaluated by image J or other software.
For me - honestly - one question is to be answered - design to be elucidated:
at which level you are going to research / observe the release of NT's: macroscopic -microsccopic (histologically, (bio-)chemically, immuno-histo-cyto-chemically, as well as other modern microscopic and non-microscopic techniques, ultrastructurally)?
There are multiple levels of assessment, including micro dialysis, aperometry, fast scan cyclic voltammetry, however all are technically difficult. If you want to make headway with them a collaborator is the best route.
You can do some direct measurements using tissue punches/dissected brain regions, but it's hard to tell the difference between stored neurotransmitter and released.
A very good question that we were trying to answer ourselves. We finally settled with HPLC measurement of neurotransmitter levels.
Please take a look at the paper titled "Potential Antidepressant Activity of Areca catechu Nut via Elevation of Serotonin and Noradrenaline in the Hippocampus of Rats" published in Phytotherapy Research
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