Regardless of discipline, quantitative literacy is a critical component of any scientist's skill set. A recent push from the NINDS has focused on enhancing and maintaining this expertise in trainees to enhance scientific fluency and to combat the reproducibility crisis. T32-funded programs often include off-campus retreats, providing opportunities to integrate a quantitative literacy component, or thematic focus. Here we will discuss the lessons and considerations learned from organizing a retreat focused on quantitative aspects of diagnostics for spinal cord injury. Survey results regarding retreat events and workshops reveal elements that were perceived to be successful by attendees. Events developed with active learning that focused on collaborative problem-solving and cross-discipline quantitative measures were well received by trainees. On the other hand, lectures and panel discussions were found to be less effective in boosting long-lasting improvements in quantitative literacy. Taken as a whole, the...

Read advocacy news from the week of November 4, 2016.

In light of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on global health, as well as disruption to daily life and business across the world, we are delaying the Neuroscience 2020 abstract submission window. The previously scheduled submission window of April 9-30, 2020 is now July 6-16, 2020.

Why we sleep remains one of science’s greatest unsolved mysteries. However, researchers are beginning to unravel and understand the intricate neurobiological mechanisms involved in the process of sleep.

SfN member Christopher Cowan and his colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina hosted an interactive lab tour earlier this month.

Read advocacy news from the week of October 14, 2016.

High-level spinal cord injury (SCI) often reduces neural regulation of cardiovascular function. During the chronic phase, humoral regulation via the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is enhanced to compensatorily maintaining blood pressure. It was recently shown that transplanting early-stage neurons into the injured cord mitigates cardiovascular disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying this recovery remain largely unknown. Here, we employed various pharmacological interventions to elucidate whether this strategic transplantation affects the imbalance of neuroendocrine regulation of hemodynamics and the role of specific serotonergic and catecholaminergic components. Female rats received a complete crush at the 4th thoracic spinal cord. Embryonic neural progenitor cells harvested from the raphe nuclei (RN-NPCs) or the spinal cord (SC-NPCs) were transplanted into the lesion. Naïve rats or injury alone served as controls. After 8-9 weeks, radio-telemetric recordings demonstrated that both implants decreased...

Read advocacy news from the week of September 16, 2016.

Activation of hypothalamic paraventricular oxytocin (OXTPVN) neurons by social or stress stimuli triggers OXT release to respectively promote social investigation or buffer adverse effects of stress. Astrocytes, a type of glial cells, can bidirectionally interact with hypothalamic neurons to participate in local activity regulation within the paraventricular nucleus (PVN). It remains unknown whether contextual factors related to stimuli, as well as biological factors such as sex, influence OXTPVN neuronal or astrocyte activity and/or their interactions. To address this question, we performed dual-color fiber photometry in freely behaving male and female mice to simultaneously record Ca2+ dynamics in OXTPVN neurons and astrocytes during acute social (i.e. interactions with familiar vs. unfamiliar conspecifics) and stress (i.e. looming shadow) stimuli. During social stimuli, we observed most pronounced Ca2+ changes in OXTPVN neurons in females, revealing sex- and familiarity context-specificity. No astrocyte...

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) results in diffuse axonal injury (DAI) and diffuse vascular injury (DVI). Both DAI and DVI result from inertial shearing forces, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, the spatial relationships between DAI and DVI...