New neurons are continuously generated throughout life in the dentate gyrus. In her lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Linda Overstreet-Wadiche studies the physiology of newly generated and existing cells in the dentate gyrus. More specifically, she investigates how various cell types, including newly generated neurons and GABAergic interneurons, contribute to the function of this unique brain region, as well as how neuronal connections are established and extinguished. In this Meet the Expert, she shares considerations that influenced some of the most important decisions she made early in her career, like which grad school to attend, labs to do her rotations in, and PIs with whom to do her postdoctoral training. In addition, she recounts factors — including life events and novel findings — that went into the choices that would shape the trajectory of her research program.

Material below summarizes the article Convergent Inputs from the Hippocampus and Thalamus to the Nucleus Accumbens Regulate Dopamine Neuron Activity, published on December 12, 2018, in JNeurosci and authored by Stephanie M. Perez and Daniel J. Lodge. One of the main types of symptoms experienced by people with schizophrenia are positive symptoms, which include hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. This psychosis is thought to be mediated by aberrant dopamine signaling, but the cause of this aberrant signaling has not been conclusively demonstrated. We previously investigated the afferent regulation of the dopamine system and identified a glutamatergic pathway from the ventral hippocampus to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) crucial to the regulation of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Given that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit hyperactivity in hippocampal subfields that is correlated with the severity of positive symptoms, it is likely the dopamine dysfunction in schizophrenia is driven by aberrant ventral hippocampal activity. Consistent with this hypothesis, recent postmortem studies revealed glutamatergic abnormalities in the NAc, specifically in expression of vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (vGlut2). Because the hippocampus expresses vGlut2 at relatively low levels, we began to explore areas with high levels of vGlut2 expression such as the thalamus, a structure composed of many subnuclei that has previously been implicated in schizophrenia. Of importance to our work is the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT), which has been shown to provide a dense glutamatergic projection to the NAc.

I never saw myself running a nonprofit for mental health — it wasn’t an ambition of mine. All my life I pursued traditional science and medicine: the lab, the clinic, the white coat. During my work at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Little Rock, Arkansas, however, I became interested in mental health advocacy when I learned how heavily environment impacts mental state — almost as much as brain chemistry or neural wiring. In my clinical and research training I’d heard stories of abuse, disparity, and disadvantage that made it clear if I wanted to improve mental health, I couldn’t ignore the role of community. I recognized the necessity of stepping out of the lab and connecting with others to make a bigger impact than any one person can have alone. One day a friend posted that it was Mental Illness Awareness Day. It was my first time hearing of it. As a future psychiatrist and as a neuroscientist, I couldn't believe I was working in the psychiatric hub of Arkansas and had no idea this initiative existed. I thought about the impact increased mental health awareness could have on the community at large and knew I had to figure out how to get this information out there.

Networking is more than just approaching someone whose career you admire and exchanging business cards. Establishing your network should start with your peers, or even trainees. They can serve as a support system as you navigate similar career stages, and they may even end up in an institution or company of interest to you in the future. Rae Nishi, the chair of SfN’s Professional Development Committee, shares that overall the key to success is being nice and following up. “The relationships that you form right now should be at the level of making friends with people, being nice, and being able to sustain those relationships.” Watch this interactive panel from SfN’s annual meeting to learn more approaches to building professional relationships.

The consequences of aging can vary dramatically between different brain regions and cell types. In the ventral midbrain, dopaminergic neurons develop physiological deficits with normal aging that likely convey susceptibility to neurodegeneration. While nearby GABAergic neurons are thought to be more resilient, decreased GABA signaling in other areas nonetheless correlates with age-related cognitive decline and the development of degenerative diseases. Here, we used two novel cell type-specific Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification models to elucidate the impact of healthy brain aging on the molecular profiles of dopamine and GABA neurons in the ventral midbrain. By analyzing differential gene expression from young adult (7-10 month) and old (21-24 month) mice, we detected commonalities in the aging process in both neuronal types, including increased inflammatory responses and upregulation of pro-survival pathways. Both cell types also showed downregulation of genes involved in synaptic connectivity an...

Recording the spiking activity from subcellular compartments of neurons such as axons and dendrites during mouse behavior with 2-photon calcium imaging is increasingly common yet remains challenging due to low signal-to-noise, inaccurate region-of-interest (ROI) identification, movement artifacts, and difficulty in grouping ROIs from the same neuron. To address these issues, we present a computationally efficient pre-processing pipeline for subcellular signal detection, movement artifact identification, and ROI grouping. For subcellular signal detection, we capture the frequency profile of calcium transient dynamics by applying Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) on smoothed time-series calcium traces collected from axon ROIs. We then apply band-pass filtering methods (e.g. 0.05 to 0.12 Hz) to select ROIs that contain frequencies that match the power band of transients. To remove motion artifacts from z-plane movement, we apply Principal Component Analysis on all calcium traces and use a Bottom-Up Segmentation ch...

Offering kids opportunities to engage with science early on sets them up to appreciate their brains and think about neuroscience careers as they mature. In this article, Mark Williams, Anina Rich, Regine Zopf (from Macquarie University, in Sydney), and Alexandra Woolgar (from the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom) share three activities they used to demonstrate neuroscience concepts to kindergarteners and how they made an impact. What happens in the brain when we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell? How should we take care of our brains so we can continue to vividly experience the world around us? These are some of the questions we asked students during Neuroscience for Kindy Kids, a day of interactive activities to teach approximately 180 kindergarteners about attention, multisensory interaction, and adaptation in the brain. Throughout the day, we had class groups of 20–23 students rotate through 30-minute activities. The point of these activities was to get young children to think about the brain and appreciate the complexity of everyday experiences. Knowing more about the brain promotes curiosity and increases the likelihood of making good choices, such as wearing a helmet when riding a bicycle or scooter.

Stem cell-derived motor neurons provide a unique opportunity to study molecular processes controlling specification of neuronal identity and to probe pathological processes leading to neurodegeneration in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Hynek Wichterle, whose lab models and studies the development of the nervous system in vitro, will cover: - What it means to become a defined neuronal cell type in the central nervous system. - Findings that neuronal genes are controlled by distributed enhancers rather than super-enhancers. - Approaches to modeling neurodegenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease of spinal motor neurons.

Working memory (WM) refers to the ability to hold and manipulate information in the brain during a delay for future use. WM requires several cognitive functions, such as planning, executive control, task monitoring, and memory. Prior work employing neural recordings has found that optimal WM performance is accompanied by populations of mPFC neurons tracking the various task requirements (e.g., epochs and rules). Notably, persistent elevated activity has been observed in mPFC neurons during the delay epoch of working memory tasks. This persistent activity was initially considered evidence the mPFC acted as a buffer to temporarily retain information. This view has been recently challenged by studies suggesting the mPFC does not directly store memory information but rather is important for directing cognitive resources and attention toward the relevant neural circuits designated to maintain memory representations. In this framework, our study aimed to further characterize the contribution of rodent mPFC to WM by employing a well-established measure of WM: the odor span task (OST). The OST is a WM task for rodents that closely resembles human tasks that assess memory span. Performance of the OST depends on a distributed neural circuit including mPFC and dorsomedial striatum. However, to date, no studies have assessed the patterns of neural activity underlying OST performance.

Material below is adapted from the SfN Short Course session The Stress Response: Sex-Specific Neural Mechanisms, by Debra A. Bangasser and Kimberly R. Wiersielis. Short Courses are daylong scientific trainings on emerging neuroscience topics and research techniques held the day before the start of SfN’s annual meeting. There are well-established differences in the rates of psychiatric disorders, such as major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which disproportionately affect women, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia, which more often affect men. Stress can also increase the severity of these disorders. Researchers are investigating how sex differences in stress responses might influence the development and progression of psychiatric disorders. One possible driver of sex differences in responses is corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a hormone produced by the hypothalamus that activates the body’s stress response. Previous studies have shown sex differences in CRF regulation and expression, as well as in the expression of a protein that binds CRF and makes it less available to activate the stress response in the brain. This decreased availability can have neurological and behavioral effects. For example, higher levels of CRF in female mice have been connected to increased anxiety.