Autonomic imbalance—particularly reduced activity from brainstem parasympathetic cardiac vagal neurons (CVNs)—is a major characteristic of many cardiorespiratory diseases. Therapeutic approaches to selectively enhance CVN activity have been limited by the lack of defined, translationally relevant targets. Previous studies have identified an important excitatory synaptic pathway from oxytocin (OXT) neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus to brainstem CVNs, suggesting that OXT could provide a key selective excitation of CVNs. In clinical studies, intranasal OXT has been shown to increase parasympathetic cardiac activity, improve autonomic balance, and reduce obstructive event durations and oxygen desaturations in obstructive sleep apnea patients. However, the mechanisms by which activation of hypothalamic OXT neurons, or intranasal OXT, enhance brainstem parasympathetic cardiac activity remain unclear. CVNs are located in two cholinergic brainstem nuclei: nucleus ambiguus (NA) and dorsal m...

Interoception and associated subjective states shape adaptive behaviors. In humans, interoceptive information is hierarchically processed in the insular cortex (IC), being integrated first in the posterior IC (PIC) and then processed in the anterior IC (AIC) to generate subjective states. However, it has not been established whether this is the case in other species nor whether utilization of interoceptive states to guide behavior is also specifically associated with functional engagement of the AIC, as suggested by this hierarchical model. We investigated in male Sprague Dawley rats whether the use of pharmacologically induced internal states to guide instrumental behavior in a discrimination task functionally engages the AIC as opposed to the mere experience of such states. Rats trained to use the interoceptive state produced by the centrally acting GABAA receptor antagonist pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) or the peripherally acting β-adrenoreceptor agonist isoproterenol to guide their behavior performed as well...

The two main cell types in the striatum, dopamine receptor 1 and adenosine receptor 2a spiny projection neurons (D1-SPNs and A2A-SPNs), have distinct roles in regulating motor- and reward-related behaviors. Cre-selective CRISPR-dCas9 systems allow for cell-type specific, epigenomic-based manipulation of gene expression with gene-specific single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) and have potential to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying striatal subtype mediated behaviors. Conditional transgenic Rosa26:LSL-dCas9-p300 mice were recently generated to allow for robust expression of dCas9-p300 expression with Cre-driven cell-type specificity. This system utilizes p300, a histone acetyltransferase which regulates gene expression by unwinding chromatin and making that region of the genome more accessible for transcription. Rosa26-LSL-dCas9-p300 mice were paired with Drd1-Cre and Ador2a-Cre mice to generate Drd1-Cre:dCas9-p300 and Ador2a-Cre:dCas9-p300 mouse lines and underwent behavioral phenotyping when sgRNAs were not p...

Material below summarizes the article Functional Connectome Analyses Reveal the Human Olfactory Network Organization, published on May 29, 2020, in eNeuro and authored by T. Campbell Arnold, Yuqi You, Mingzhou Ding, Xi-Nian Zuo, Ivan de Araujo and Wen Li. Highlights Smell is borne out of a network of interconnected regions that are distributed across the brain. The larger odor processing network consists of three smaller subnetworks, which serve different functional purposes. Segregation of subnetworks helps to insulate the different functions and facilitates olfactory perception.

Since I was a child, I’ve had two passions: science and storytelling. For the vast majority of my career, I’ve pursued the former. I majored in neuroscience at Smith College and went on to earn my doctorate at Northwestern University. I recently completed my postdoctoral training at Columbia and will soon open my independent laboratory in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology at the University of California Davis. Sounds like a typical climb up the academic ladder, right? Yet despite this traditional career trajectory, my passion for storytelling was ever-present. After nearly a decade as a scientist, I decided to combine it with my longstanding commitment to science education as a children’s book writer. My debut science adventure series, The Magnificent Makers, was recently published by Random House Children’s Books. As I delved into the world of writing for kids, I discovered four key aspects of my scientific training that were directly applicable to my journey as an author.

The following is an excerpt from a commentary in the Journal of Neuroscience, Recognizing Team Science Contributions in Academic Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure, that originated from two Neuroscience 2019 Professional Development workshops (watch them here and here). Read the full commentary here. The vision of a scientist as a lone investigator reaching an epiphany is a widely cherished narrative. Consistent with this ideal, single author papers were frequent 50 years ago, when the Society for Neuroscience started. However, the basic and translational questions and the public health challenges being addressed in current neuroscience research are increasingly interdisciplinary and multidimensional, and so the vast majority of significant studies require a team of investigators, working together collaboratively. This trend is evident in the increased number of authors per citation and the rapid expansion of collaborative grants. Unfortunately, academic culture has not yet caught up with the direction of the science. Hiring, promotions, and peer review tend to credit the first and last authors, with little consideration that the work required an entire team. At the 2019 SfN annual meeting, there were two workshops addressing team science. One workshop highlighted the challenges in team science for trainees, while the other focused on ways in which academic leaders could change our procedures to address the disconnect between overly narrow attention to individual first and last authorship in hiring, promotion, and tenure versus the collaborative nature of current research. This Commentary distills the ideas and recommendations brought forth by these workshops, to advocate for changes in academic recognition.

The history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is inextricably intertwined with the history of neuroscience. Since the early days of AI, scientists turned to the human brain as a source of guidance for the development of intelligent machines. Unsurprisingly, many pioneers of AI such as Warren McCulloch were trained in the sciences of the brain. Modern AI borrowed most of its vocabulary from neurology and psychology. For instance, computational models consisting of networks of interconnected units —one of the most common approaches to AI— are called Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Each unit is called an “artificial neuron.” Several areas of research in AI are labelled through neuropsychological categories such as computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing etc. It’s not just a matter of terminology. ANNs, for example, are actually inspired by and based on the functioning of biological neural networks that constitute animal nervous systems.

People often ask me, “Can you have it all?” I don’t know if you can, but I’m certainly having a good time trying. Here’s how.

The development of motor control over sensory organs is a critical milestone, enabling active exploration and shaping of the sensory environment. Whether the onset of sensory organ motor control directly influences the development of corresponding sensory cortices remains unknown. Here, we confirm and exploit the late onset of whisking behavior in mice to address this question in the somatosensory system. Using ex vivo electrophysiology, we describe a transient increase in the intrinsic excitability of excitatory neurons in layer IV of the barrel cortex, which processes whisker input, immediately following the onset of active whisking on postnatal days 13 and 14. This increase in neuronal gain is specific to layer IV, independent of changes in synaptic strength, and requires prior sensory experience. Further, these effects are not expressed in inhibitory interneurons in barrel cortex. The transient increase in excitability is not evident in layer II/III of barrel cortex or in the visual cortex upon eye ope...

Fiber photometry is a neuroscience technique that can continuously monitor in vivo fluorescence to assess population neural activity or neuropeptide/transmitter release in freely behaving animals. Despite the widespread adoption of this technique, methods to statistically analyse data in an unbiased, objective, and easily adopted manner are lacking. Various pipelines for data analysis exist, but they are often system-specific, only for pre-processing data, and/or lack usability. Current post hoc statistical approaches involve inadvertently biased user-defined time-binned averages or area under the curve analysis. To date, no post-hoc user-friendly tool with few assumptions for a standardised unbiased analysis exists, yet such a tool would improve reproducibility and statistical reliability for all users. Hence, we have developed a user-friendly post hoc statistical analysis package in Python that is easily downloaded and applied to data from any fiber photometry system. This Fi ber Pho tometry P ost H oc A...