Roberto Colangeli

• PhD
• Researcher at Marche Polytechnic University

Significance Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric condition triggered by a brief traumatic event causing delayed and prolonged changes in emotional behaviors that are accompanied by amygdalar hyperactivity. Understanding of the underlying neuronal mechanisms during stress that eventually culminate in its delayed impact...

Epilepsy is often associated with emotional disturbances and the endocannabinoid (eCB) system tunes synaptic transmission in brain regions regulating emotional behavior. Thus, persistent alteration of eCB signaling after repeated seizures may contribute to the development of epilepsy-related emotional disorders. Here we report that repeatedly elici...

The brain’s endocannabinoid system is a powerful controller of neurotransmitter release, shaping synaptic communication under physiological and pathological conditions. However, our understanding of endocannabinoid signaling in vivo is limited by the inability to measure their changes at timescales commensurate with the high lability of lipid signa...

People with epilepsy often have psychiatric comorbidities that can significantly impair their quality of life. We previously reported that repeated seizure activity persistently alters endocannabinoid (eCB) signaling in the amygdala which accounts for comorbid emotional dysregulation in rats, however, the mechanism by which these alterations in eCB...

Epilepsy often presents with severe emotional comorbidities including anxiety and abnormal fear responses which impose a significant burden on, and reduce, quality of life in people living with the disease. Our lab has recently shown that kindled seizures lead to changes in emotional processing resulting from the downregulation of anandamide signal...

Background Numerous mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are available, but all suffer from certain limitations, thus prompting further attempts. To date, no one model exists with amyloidopathy in a BALB/c strain. Objective To generate and characterize the C.B6/J-APP swe mouse, a model of AD with a mutated human gene for the amyloid-β protein...

Epilepsy is at times a fatal disease. Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of epilepsy-related mortality in people with intractable epilepsy and is defined by exclusion; non-accidental, non-toxicologic, and non-anatomic causes of death. While SUDEP often follows a bilateral tonic-clonic seizure, the mechanisms that ultim...

Repeated seizures result in a persistent maladaptation of endocannabinoid signaling, mediated in part by anandamide signaling deficiency in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) that manifests as aberrant synaptic function and altered emotional behaviour. Here, we determined the effect of repeated seizures (kindling) on 2-AG signaling on GABA transmission...

Epilepsy is at times a fatal disease. Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of mortality in people with intractable epilepsy and is defined by exclusion; non-accidental, non-toxicologic, and non-anatomic causes of death. While SUDEP often follows a bilateral tonic-clonic seizure, the mechanisms that ultimately lead to ter...

Nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco, has bivalent rewarding and aversive properties. Recently, the lateral habenula (LHb), a structure that controls ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) function, has attracted attention as it is potentially involved in the aversive properties of drugs of abuse. Hitherto, the LHb-modulation of nicotin...

Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common form of epilepsy, and current antiepileptic drugs are ineffective in many patients. The endocannabinoid system has been associated with an on-demand protective response to seizures. Blocking endocanna-binoid catabolism would elicit antiepileptic effects, devoid of psychotropic effects. We herein report the...

Tobacco smoking is a serious health problem worldwide and a leading cause of mortality. Nicotine, the addictive component of tobacco, affects a range of emotional responses, including anxiety-related behaviors. Although perceived by smokers to be anxiolytic, evidence suggests that smoking increases anxiety and that mood fluctuates with nicotine int...

Endocannabinoid (eCB) and serotonin (5-HT) neuromodulatory systems work both independently and together to finely orchestrate neuronal activity throughout the brain to strongly sculpt behavioral functions. Surprising parallelism between the behavioral effects of 5-HT and eCB activity has been widely reported, including the regulation of emotional s...

Long-lasting confusion and memory difficulties during the postictal state remain a major unmet problem in epilepsy that lacks pathophysiological explanation and treatment. We previously identified that long-lasting periods of severe postictal hypoperfusion/hypoxia, not seizures per se, are associated with memory impairment after temporal lobe seizu...

Long-lasting confusion and memory difficulties during the postictal state remain a major unmet problem in epilepsy that lacks pathophysiological explanation and treatment. Previously, we demonstrated that the postictal period is marked by a long-lasting stroke-like event in both animal models and humans with epilepsy (Farrell et al., 2016). Here, w...

The molecular basis for temporal lobe epileptogenesis (TLE) remains poorly defined as of yet. Recent evidence shows that serotonin2C receptors (5-HT2CRs), NR2A and NR2B subunit-containing NMDARs and cannabinoid 1Rs (CB1Rs) may be involved in the progression of the epileptic disorders. Moreover, CB1R activation has been reported to modulate the acti...

Endocannabinoids (eCBs) and serotonin (5-HT) play a neuromodulatory role in the central nervous system. Both eCBs and 5-HT regulate neuronal excitability and their pharmacological potentiation has been shown to control seizures in pre-clinical and human studies. Compelling evidence indicates that eCB and 5-HT systems interact to modulate several ph...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Synthetic cannabinoids and phytocannabinoids have been shown to suppress seizures both in humans and experimental models of epilepsy. However, they generally have a detrimental effect on memory and memory-related processes. Here we compared the effect of the inhibition of the endocannabinoid (eCB) degradation versus synthetic CB agonist on limbic s...

A recent article by Farrell et al. characterizes the phenomenon, mechanisms, and treatment of a local and severe hypoperfusion/hypoxia event that occurs in brain regions following a focal seizure. Given the well-established role of cerebral ischemia/hypoxia in brain damage and behavioral dysfunction in other clinical settings (e.g., stroke, cerebra...

Abstract Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs of abuse. Tobacco smoking is a major cause of many health problems, and is the first preventable cause of death worldwide. Several findings show that nicotine exerts significant aversive as well as the well-known rewarding motivational effects. Less certain is the anatomical substrate that mediat...

The mitochondrial chaperonin Hsp60 is a ubiquitous molecule with multiple roles, constitutively expressed and inducible by oxidative stress. In the brain, Hsp60 is widely distributed and has been implicated in neurological disorders, including epilepsy. A role for mitochondria and oxidative stress has been proposed in epileptogenesis of temporal lo...

Hsp60 is widely distributed in the brain, and its alteration has been involved in different neurological disorders. Epilepsy is considered one of the most common neurological disorders and typically involves the hippocampal formation. Compelling evidence describes a role of mitochondria, oxidative stress and both innate and adaptive immunity during...

The endocannabinoid system is an important regulator of neuroendocrine and behavioural adaptation in stress related disorders thus representing a novel potential therapeutic target. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitor URB597 on stress mediators of HPA axis and to study the role of th...

Aims: Substantial evidence indicates that 5-HT2C receptors are involved in the control of neuronal network excitability and in seizure pathophysiology. Here, we have addressed the relatively unexplored relationship between temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), the most frequent type of intractable epilepsy, and 5-HT2CRs. Methods: In this study, we inves...

Background: A considerable body of human and animal experimental evidence links monoaminergic systems and cognition. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), being able to enhance monoaminergic transmission and having neuroprotective properties, might represent a promising therapeutic strategy in cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and o...

Anandamide (AEA) is an endogenous cannabinoid catalyzed by the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). FAAH Inhibitors significantly increase AEA brain levels thereby potentiating its effects at CB1 receptors. Among FAAH inhibitors a potent and selective inhibitor is URB597, which elicits marked anxiolytic-like and antidepressant-like responses i...

Psycho-genetic studies have revealed a role for the brain serotonin system in gambling proneness and poor decision-making. We assessed whether manipulation of brain serotonin levels in rats affected performance in operant-based tasks for decision-making and gambling proneness. Male Wistar rats were exposed to an l-tryptophan (TRP) deficient diet (0...

Olfactory memory dysfunctions were investigated in the triple-transgenic murine model of Alzheimer's disease (3 × Tg-AD). In the social transmission of food preference test, 3 × Tg-AD mice presented severe deficits in odor-based memory, without gross changes in general odor-ability. Aβ and tau immunoreactivity was not observed in the primary proces...