The annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting yields significant, measurable impacts that conflict with the environmental commitment of the Society and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations to address the climate emergency ([IPCC, 2018][1]). We used 12,761 presenters’ origins, two online carbon calculators, and benchmark values to estimate 2018 meeting-related travel, event venue operations, and hotel accommodation emissions. Presenters’ conference travel resulted in between 17,298 and 8690 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide (t CO2), with or without radiative forcing index factors. Over 92% of authors traveled by air and were responsible for >99% of total travel-related emissions. Extrapolations based on 28,691 registrants yielded between 69,592.60 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (t CO2e) and 38,010.85 t CO2 from travel. Comparatively, authors’ and registrants’ hotel accommodation emissions equaled 429 and 965 t CO2e, whereas operation of the San Diego Conventio...

The brain is an organ that functions as a network of many elements connected in a nonuniform manner. In the brain, the neocortex is evolutionarily newest and is thought to be primarily responsible for the high intelligence of mammals. In the mature mammalian brain, all cortical regions are expected to have some degree of homology, but have some variations of local circuits to achieve specific functions performed by individual regions. However, few cellular-level studies have examined how the networks within different cortical regions differ. This study aimed to find rules for systematic changes of connectivity (microconnectomes) across 16 different cortical region groups. We also observed unknown trends in basic parameters in vitro such as firing rate and layer thickness across brain regions. Results revealed that the frontal group shows unique characteristics such as dense active neurons, thick cortex, and strong connections with deeper layers. This suggests the frontal side of the cortex is inherently ca...

During free viewing, we move our eyes and fixate on objects to recognize the visual scene of our surroundings. To investigate the neural representation of objects in this process, we studied individual and population neuronal activity in three different visual regions of the brains of macaque monkeys ( Macaca fuscata ): the primary and secondary visual cortices (V1, V2) and the inferotemporal cortex (IT). We designed a task where the animal freely selected objects in a stimulus image to fixate on while we examined the relationship between spiking activity, the order of fixations, and the fixated objects. We found that activity changed across repeated fixations on the same object in all three recorded areas, with observed reductions in firing rates. Furthermore, the responses of individual neurons became sparser and more selective with individual objects. The population activity for individual objects also became distinct. These results suggest that visual neurons respond dynamically to repeated input stimu...

Spoken language contains information at a broad range of timescales, from phonetic distinctions on the order of milliseconds to semantic contexts which shift over seconds to minutes. It is not well understood how the brain’s speech production systems combine features at these timescales into a coherent vocal output. We investigated the spatial and temporal representations in cerebral cortex of three phonological units with different durations: consonants, vowels, and syllables. Electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings were obtained from five participants while speaking single syllables. We developed a novel clustering and Kalman filter-based trend analysis procedure to sort electrodes into temporal response profiles. A linear discriminant classifier was used to determine how strongly each electrode’s response encoded phonological features. We found distinct time-courses of encoding phonological units depending on their duration: consonants were represented more during speech preparation, vowels were represen...

Hippocampal inhibitory neurons (INs) contact local targets and project to different brain areas to form synapses on distal neurons. Despite the importance of INs for hippocampal function and interregional brain communication, the impact of activity-dependent plasticity mechanisms on local and long-range GABAergic synapses formed by hippocampal INs remains to be fully elucidated. Here, we use optogenetic-coupled electrophysiology in mice to show that protein kinase A (PKA), a master regulator of GABAergic synapse plasticity, causes a form of long-term potentiation of inhibitory synapses (iLTP) in hippocampal granule cells (GCs). This form of iLTP is observed in GCs synapses originated in local INs expressing the marker somatostatin (SST), but not in those expressing parvalbumin. Long-range synapses formed by SST INs onto medial septum neurons are unaffected by PKA activation. iLTP of local SST synapses on GCs is accompanied by changes in presynaptic probability of release and is occluded by pharmacological ...

The intercalated cells of the amygdala (ITCs) are a fundamental processing structure in the amygdala that remain relatively understudied. They are phylogenetically conserved from insectivores through primates, inhibitory, and project to several of the main processing and output stations of the amygdala and basal forebrain. Through these connections, the ITCs are best known for their role in conditioned fear, where they are required for fear extinction learning and recall. Prior work on ITC connectivity is limited, and thus holistic characterization of their afferent and efferent connectivity in a genetically defined manner is incomplete. The ITCs express the FoxP2 transcription factor, affording genetic access to these neurons for viral input-output mapping. To fully characterize the anatomic connectivity of the ITCs, we used cre-dependent viral strategies in FoxP2-cre mice to reveal the projections of the main (mITC), caudal (cITC), and lateral (lITC) clusters along with their presynaptic sources of inner...

Motor learning and flexibility allow animals to perform routine actions efficiently while keeping them flexible. A number of paradigms are used to test cognitive flexibility, but not many of them focus specifically on the learning of complex motor sequences and their flexibility. While many tests use operant or touchscreen boxes that offer high throughput and reproducibility, the motor actions themselves are mostly simple presses of a designated lever. To focus more on motor actions during the operant task and to probe the flexibility of these well trained actions, we developed a new operant paradigm for mice, the “timed sequence task.” The task requires mice to learn a sequence of lever presses that have to be emitted in precisely defined time limits. After training, the required pressing sequence and/or timing of individual presses is modified to test the ability of mice to alter their previously trained motor actions. We provide a code for the new protocol that can be used and adapted to common types of...

The retinas of the vast majority of vertebrate species are termed “duplex,” that is, they contain both rod and cone photoreceptor neurons in different ratios. The retina of little skate ( Leucoraja erinacea ) is a rarity among vertebrates because it contains only a single photoreceptor cell type and is thus “simplex.” This unique retina provides us with an important comparative model and an exciting opportunity to study retinal circuitry within the context of a visual system with a single photoreceptor cell type. What is perhaps even more intriguing is the fact that the Leucoraja retina is able use that single photoreceptor cell type to function under both scotopic and photopic ranges of illumination. Although some ultrastructural characteristics of skate photoreceptors have been examined previously, leading to a general description of them as “rods” largely based on outer segment (OS) morphology and rhodopsin expression, a detailed study of the fine anatomy of the entire cell and its synaptic connectivity...

The Drosophila mushroom body (MB) is an important model system for studying the synaptic mechanisms of associative learning. In this system, coincidence of odor-evoked calcium influx and dopaminergic input in the presynaptic terminals of Kenyon cells (KCs), the principal neurons of the MB, triggers long-term depression (LTD), which plays a critical role in olfactory learning. However, it is controversial whether such synaptic plasticity is accompanied by a corresponding decrease in odor-evoked calcium activity in the KC presynaptic terminals. Here, we address this question by inducing LTD by pairing odor presentation with optogenetic activation of dopaminergic neurons (DANs). This allows us to rigorously compare the changes at the presynaptic and postsynaptic sites in the same conditions. By imaging presynaptic acetylcholine release in the condition where LTD is reliably observed in the postsynaptic calcium signals, we show that neurotransmitter release from KCs is depressed selectively in the MB compartme...

Depression is a frequent and serious illness, and stress is considered the main risk factor for its onset. First-line antidepressants increase serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) levels in the brain. We previously reported that an N -acetyltransferase, Shati/Nat8l, is upregulated in the dorsal striatum (dSTR) of stress-susceptible mice exposed to repeated social defeat stress (RSDS) and that dSTR Shati/Nat8l overexpression in mice (dSTR-Shati OE) induces stress vulnerability and local reduction in 5-HT content. Male mice were used in this study, and we found that dSTR 5-HT content decreased in stress-susceptible but not in resilient mice. Moreover, vulnerability to stress in dSTR-Shati OE mice was suppressed by the activation of serotonergic neurons projecting from the dorsal raphe nucleus (dRN) to the dSTR, followed by upregulation of 5-HT content in the dSTR using designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD). We evaluated the role of GABA in modulating the serotonergic system in ...