Effects of Brain Gangliosides on Functional Recovery in Experimental Regeneration and Reinnervation

Abstract

There is now an increasing body of evidence to support the idea that Cns and Pns gangliosides may play an important functional role in various nervous tissues although their precise role has not yet been elucidated. There is also good biochemical evidence that gangliosides are highly concentrated in the nerve terminals, most of them associated with the nerve terminal plasma membrane (Burton, 1976; De Robertis et al. 1976; Morgan et al. 1976), nevertheless any clear relationship between the subcellular distribution of gangliosides within the different nerve terminal membranes and the normal chain of events involved in transmitter release and the overall synaptic economy has not been yet established. In spite of these uncertainties we thought that it might be useful to test the effects of gangliosides during the process of nerve regeneration and reinnervation of target tissues.