Manfred Schedlowski

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the effects of maternal immune challenge between middle and late gestation periods in mice are dissociable in terms of fetal brain cytokine responses to maternal inflammation and the pathological consequences in brain and behavior.

TL;DR: Three strategies that could be used to modulate the placebo response, depending on which stage of the drug development process they are applied are discussed.

TL;DR: Current neurobiological models like expectation-induced activation of the brain reward circuitry, Pavlovian conditioning, and anxiety mechanisms of the nocebo response are discussed and major questions for future research are addressed.

TL;DR: Pregnant mouse dams receiving a single exposure to the cytokine-releasing agent, PolyI:C, on gestation day 9 produced offspring that subsequently exhibited multiple schizophrenia-related behavioural deficits in adulthood, in comparison to offspring from vehicle injected or non-injected control dams, leading to a conclusion that prenatal Polyi:C treatment represents one of the most powerful environmental-developmental models of schizophrenia to date.

TL;DR: Exposure to prenatal immune challenge and peripubertal stress induces synergistic pathological effects on adult behavioral functions and neurochemistry and it is demonstrated that the prenatal insult markedly increases the vulnerability of the pubescent offspring to brain immune changes in response to stress.