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Lindera strychnifolia (Tendai-Uyaku), a medicinal plant, has long been used for the treatment of cardiac, renal and rheumatic diseases in Japan. We investigated the effect of Lindera strychnifolia on systolic blood pressure, cardiac function, and plasma noradrenaline levels in rats. Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) were given free access to water or extract solution of Lindera strychnifolia, which was extracted with a ratio of 10 g Lindera strychnifolia roots/20 ml water. Systolic blood pressure was measured by using a tail-cuf sphygmomanometer twice a week from 10 to 30 weeks of age, and compared to the age-matched Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) as a control group. At 30 weeks of age, heart function was measured by echocardiography and blood samples were taken for detection of plasma noradrenaline levels, and rats were then sacrificed. Systolic blood pressure gradually increased from 10 to 30 weeks of age in the SHR group, while it did not change in the WKY group. In the Lindera-treated SHR group, the increase in systolic blood pressure was significantly attenuated from 21 to 30 weeks of age. Echocardiography showed a significant increase in ejection fraction in the Lindera-treated SHR group (60.4 ± 7.8%) as compared to the SHR group (39.7 ± 23.4%). Plasma noradrenaline levels were significantly decreased in Lindera-treated SHR group compared to the SHR group. These results suggest that Lindera strychnifolia has an anti-hypertensive effect and improves cardiac function in spontaneous hypertensive rats. These effects may be related to the decrease in plasma noradrenaline levels by Lindera strychnifolia.

Prenatal depression is a common disease, and it is an important risk factor for depression of postpartum and the diseases of newborn. However, this diagnosis of disease was deeply dependent on questionnaires evaluation by psychologists. The methods of evaluating and monitoring depression in the clinical laboratory are very limited. We dynamically determined serum cytokines (GM-CSF, Il-1$\beta$, Il-2, Il-3, Il-4, Il-5, Il-6, Il-10, Il-12, Il-17, TNF-$\alpha$ and IFN-$\gamma$) and catecholamine (CA) hormone (adrenaline (AD) noradrenaline (NA) and dopamine (DA)) to screen valuable markers evaluating depression in pregnancy. A higher rate of anxiety in pregnant women was 73.58% (78/106) during early pregnancy, compared with it in middle pregnancy. A higher rate of depression in pregnant women was 31.73% (33/104) compared with it during early pregnancy. During early pregnancy, there were no significant differences in cytokine, AD and DA between healthy pregnant women, anxious and depressed pregnant women. But the severely depressed pregnant women had a high level of NA ($168.49\pm 11.22$pg/mL versus $340.85\pm 26.78$pg/mL, $P<0.05$) during early pregnancy. The depressed pregnant women with vaginal bleeding were at a high-level NA. During middle pregnancy, IL-1$\beta$ ($P<0.05$), IL-6 ($P<0.05$) and IL-10 levels ($P<0.05$) were significantly higher in depressed women than in healthy women. There was no significant difference in CA hormones between healthy women and depressed women. Our study showed that levels of cytokines and CA hormones kept shifting during the pregnancy process. A continuous high level of NA in serum might be related to depression during early pregnancy and might have a possibility of inducing vaginal bleeding.

Contextual changes have been found to influence the performance and expression of a wide range of learning tasks, including classically conditioned and instrumental procedures. However, attempts to uncover the neuropsychological and/or neurobiological concomitants to these demonstrations of context are meagre. In a series of experiments, we have attempted to describe a possible modulation exerted by catecholaminergic pathways upon the role of context in latent inhibition and sensory preconditioning, on the one hand, and spatial navigation and latent learning on the other. In these experiments, noradrenaline and dopamine were depleted either in the adult animal (noradrenaline) or in the neonate. It was found that noradrenergic pathways in the forebrain do influence certain complex tasks, such as latent inhibition and sensory preconditioning. Dopaminergic modulation of spatial learning tasks was demonstrated although the role of dopamine in latent learning was dependent upon the procedure applied (i.e., the number of latent learning trials presented). A tentative discussion of these findings with regard to monoaminergic involvement in the tasks examined is presented and it is suggested that these results may offer the continued development of the context concept within this particular field of endeavour.