Volume 23 Issue 9, September 2018

Diazepam causes a loss of inhibitory synapses as a consequence of long-lasting enhancement of GABAA receptor activity. Inhibitory synapses were visualised by immunolabeling of presynaptic GABAergic terminals (cyan) and postsynaptic GABAA receptor clusters (red) along primary dendrites (blue) of cortical neurons following the treatment with vehicle control (far left - upper and lower panel) or diazepam (middle left - upper and lower panel), in the absence (middle right – upper and lower panel) or presence of bicuculline (far right –upper and lower panel; scale: 20 μm (upper row) and 5 μm (lower row). For more information see the article by Jovanovic et al. on pages 1851–1867.