Imagine you are driving to a new destination, deciding on the best route. As you drive, your decision is informed by road signs, advice from your passengers, your GPS, etc. Crucially, as you approach a potential turn, you are urged to make your decision...

Functional neuroimaging studies have repeatedly demonstrated widespread neural activation in response to adminstration of noxious stimuli. Many of these brain regions, such as prefrontal cortex and cerebellum, are not part of the presumed functional anatomy of pain perception. In this study we designed an experimental paradigm to test the hypothesis that some brain regions are activated during pain administration because they support the cognitive processes involved in the evaluation of the painful stimulus. To date six subjects have completed this 3T fMRI event-related imaging study that is approved by the MGH IRB. The data has been analyzed with SPM 2B using a random effects model. Preliminary analysis of the first half of the planned cohort has been performed and the results confirm our hypothesis. Using the contrast between stimulus trials that required subjects to rate the intensity of the stimulus as compared to trials in which they performed a matched target detection task, significantly increased B...

Whether hippocampal map realignment is coupled more strongly to position or time was studied in rats trained to shuttle on a linear track. The rats were required to run from a start box and to pause at a goal location at a fixed location relative to stable distal cues (room-aligned coordinate frame). The origin of each lap was varied by shifting the start box and track as a unit (box-aligned coordinate frame) along the direction of travel. As observed by [Gothard et al. (1996a)][1], on each lap the hippocampal activity realigned from a representation that was box-aligned to one that was room-aligned. We studied the dynamics of this transition using a measure of how well the moment-by-moment ensemble activity matched the expected activity given the location of the animal in each coordinate frame. The coherency ratio, defined as the ratio of the matches for the two coordinate systems, provides a quantitative measure of the ensemble activity alignment and was used to compare four possible descriptions of the ...

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a bacterial endotoxin that induces innate immune responses. The present study aimed to elucidate alterations in cerebral cortical surface morphology induced by neonatal exposure to LPS using gyrencephalic ferrets. Male ferret pups received a subcutaneous injection of LPS (500 µg/g of body weight) on Postnatal Day (P)6 and P7. Furthermore, EdU and BrdU were administered on P5 and P7, respectively, to label postproliferative and proliferating cells that were exposed to LPS in the late stage of cortical neurogenesis. On P20 when the primary sulci and gyri had formed, MRI-based morphometry revealed an anterior shift in sulcal infolding in the medial and dorsolateral cortices of LPS-exposed ferrets. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that LPS increased the density of BrdU-labeled cells and reduced their apoptosis, as indicated by cleaved caspase-3 (cCasp3) immunostaining, in the outer stratum of the lateral sulcus located on the parietal association cortex. Furthermore, cCasp3 immuno...

Neuroscience 2024 Thank You for Attending #SfN24

Minisymposia focus on advances or present conflicting views in rapidly developing areas of neuroscience. Speakers are typically junior investigators, and researchers at all career levels are encouraged to attend. Minisymposia will take place on November 12-16 in the San Diego Convention Center. Select minisymposia will be livestreamed and available to view via a virtual platform. Minisymposia taking place during Neuroscience 2022 are listed below.

The prepositus hypoglossi nucleus (PHN), involved in horizontal gaze control, contributes to this function via cooperation with the vestibulocerebellum (VC). Furthermore, some PHN neurons have also been observed to project to cerebellar regions outside the VC. We previously reported a neuronal population in the ventral caudal PHN that projects to lobules III–V of the anterior vermis or to the cerebellar hemispheric crus. Because the properties of these neurons have not been clarified, this study aimed to determine their localization, projections, and electrophysiological and morphological characteristics in male rats. Tracing experiments revealed that these neurons were clustered within the ventral caudal PHN, approximately between bregma -12.72 mm and -12.00 mm, and did not project to the uvula/nodulus (UN), which is part of the VC. Whole-cell recordings and morphological experiments revealed that these PHN neurons exhibited high input capacitance, low input resistance, low-frequency firing, prominent vol...

Thank you for attending Neuroscience 2019!

There is a growing imperative to understand the neurophysiological impact of our rapidly changing and diverse technological, social, chemical, and physical environments. To untangle the multidimensional and interacting effects requires data at scale across diverse populations, taking measurement out of a controlled lab environment and into the field. Electroencephalography (EEG), which has correlates with various environmental factors as well as cognitive and mental health outcomes, has the advantage of both portability and cost-effectiveness for this purpose. However, with numerous field researchers spread across diverse locations, data quality issues and researcher idle time due to insufficient participants can quickly become unmanageable and expensive problems. In programs we have established in India and Tanzania, we demonstrate that with appropriate training, structured teams, and daily automated analysis and feedback on data quality, nonspecialists can reliably collect EEG data alongside various surv...

Recent fMRI studies reported transformed representations between perception and visual working memory (VWM) in the human early visual cortex (EVC). This is inconsistent with the still widely cited original proposal of the sensory account of VWM, which argues for a shared perception-VWM representation based on successful cross-decoding of the two representations. Although cross-decoding was usually lower than within-VWM decoding and consistent with transformed VWM representations, this has been attributed to experimental differences between perceptual and VWM tasks: once they are equated, the same representation is expected to exist in both. Including human participants of both sexes, this study compared target and distractor representations during the same VWM delay period for the same objects, thereby equating experimental differences. Even with strong VWM representations present throughout the occipitotemporal cortex (OTC, including EVC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC), fMRI cross-decoding revealed s...