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

Hippocampal synaptic activity is tightly regulated to ensure appropriate synaptic function and plasticity, which are important for critical cognitive processes such as learning and memory. Altered hippocampal synaptic function can lead to cognitive and behavioral deficits observed in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), necessitating a deeper fundamental understanding of hippocampal synaptic control mechanisms. Glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase 2 (GDE2 or GDPD5) is a surface transmembrane enzyme that cleaves the glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor that tethers some proteins to the membrane. Mice lacking GDE2 ( Gde2 KO) display behavioral deficits in learning and memory that are hippocampal-dependent. However, roles of GDE2 in mouse hippocampal function are not known. Here, we show that GDE2 is expressed in pre- and postsynaptic compartments along apical dendrites in hippocampal CA1 cells. Gde2 KO CA1 cells showed increased dendritic length and complexity and increased numbers ...

Intellectual disability often results from neurodevelopmental disorders that begin in childhood and are characterised by impaired cognitive functioning and an intelligence quotient below 70. Although intellectual disability is caused by both environment...

Read advocacy news from the week of April 29, 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 fourth thoracic spinal cord. Embryonic neural progenitor cells (NPCs) harvested from the raphe nuclei or the spinal cord were transplanted into the lesion. Naive rats or injury alone served as controls. After 8–9 weeks, radio-telemetric recordings demonstrated that both implants decreased tachycard...

Humans exhibit laterality preferences, with handedness being the most extensively studied. Accordingly, brain–handedness associations are well documented. However, laterality preferences extend beyond handedness to include other limbs, such as footedness and eyedness. Despite these distinctions, brain–footedness and brain–eyedness associations using resting-state functional connectomes remain largely unexplored. We utilize two large datasets, the Human Connectome Project-Development (HCP-D) and Human Connectome Project-Aging (HCP-A), to study the associations between sidedness (i.e., handedness, footedness, and eyedness) and whole-brain functional connectomes. While hand and foot preferences were correlated significantly, they explained <40% of the variance, suggesting some distinctions between measures. For both cohorts, significant associations between handedness connectivity were observed [ p  < 0.05, network-based statistics (NBS) corrected]. Notable patterns include increased connectivity for left-han...

The increasingly interdisciplinary and global nature of neuroscience is reflected in both the research and the attendees at SfN’s annual meeting.

Dive into the brain networks that determine if a message is persuasive — or not.

An effective oral presentation engages the audience and uses slides to give a clear and concise overview of research material. Panel presentations (symposia, minisymposia, clinical roundtables, and nanosymposia) as a whole should not be disjointed but should draw together several ideas from multiple researchers that relate to a centralized topical interest. Lectures should be summaries or overviews of work in a field, not research seminars. Clearly-stated learning objectives should be presented at the start of the lecture to convey anticipated learning outcomes to an audience with a wide range of backgrounds.

Neuroscience 2024 Thank You for Attending #SfN24