Sleep disorder significantly affects the life quality of a large number of people but is still an underrecognized disease. Dietary nutrition is believed to play a significant impact on sleeping wellness. Many nutritional supplements have been used trying to benefit sleep wellness. However, the relationship between nutritional components and sleep is complicated. Nutritional factors vary dramatically with different diet patterns and depend significantly on the digestive and metabiotic functions of each individual. Moreover, nutrition can profoundly affect the hormones and inflammation status which directly or indirectly contribute to insomnia. In this review, we summarized the role of major nutritional factors, carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, and vitamins on sleep and sleep disorders and discussed the potential mechanisms.

The brain is the most important and complex organ in most living creatures which serves as the center of the nervous system. The function of human brain includes controlling of the motion of the body and different organs and maintaining basic homeostasis. The disorders of the brain caused by a variety of reasons often severely impact the patients’ normal life or lead to death in extreme cases. Monocyte is an important immune cell which is often recruited to the brain in a number of brain disorders. However, the role of monocytes may not be simply described as beneficial or detrimental. It significantly depends on the disease models and the stages of disease progression. In this review, we summarized the current knowledge about the role of monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages during several common brain disorders. Major focuses include ischemic stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, intracerebral hemorrhage, and insomnia. The recruitment, differentiation, and function of monocyte in these diseases are reviewed.

Nurr1 is a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily and is a potential susceptibility gene for Parkinson's disease (PD). Several lines of studies in vitro and in vivo reported that defects in the Nurr1 gene cause nigrostriatal neuronal deficiency as seen in PD. In the present study, we used a a synthetic low molecular weight Nurr1 activator which increases the transcription of Nurr1 to investigate whether it has anti-parkinsonian effects against nigrostriatal neuronal degeneration induced by proteasome inhibitor lactacystin. Adult C57BL/6 mice were treated orally with the Nurr1 activator and an inactive structural analog as a control at a dose of 10mg/kg per day, starting 3 days before microinjection of proteasome inhibitor lactacystin into the medial forebrain bundle and the treatment continued for a total of 4 weeks. Animal behavior tests, and pathological and biochemical examinations were performed to determine the anti-parkinsonian effects of the Nurr1 activator. We found that treatment with the Nurr1 activator significantly improved rotarod performance, attenuated dopamine neuron loss and nigrostriatal dopamine reduction, increased expression of Nurr1, dopamine transporter and vesicular monoamine transporter 2, and alleviated microglial activation in the substantia nigra of lactacystin-lesioned mice. These results suggest that the Nurr1 activator may become an innovative strategy for the treatment of PD.