Science is changing: the volume and complexity of data are increasing, the number of studies is growing and the goal of achieving reproducible results requires new solutions for scientific data management. In the field of neuroscience, the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI-Neuro) initiative aims to develop sustainable solutions for research data management (RDM). To obtain an understanding of the present RDM situation in the neuroscience community, NFDI-Neuro conducted a comprehensive survey among the neuroscience community. Here, we report and analyze the results of the survey. We focused the survey and our analysis on current needs, challenges, and opinions about RDM. The German neuroscience community perceives barriers with respect to RDM and data sharing mainly linked to (1) lack of data and metadata standards, (2) lack of community adopted provenance tracking methods, (3) lack of secure and privacy preserving research infrastructure for sensitive data, (4) lack of RDM literacy, and (5...

Peripheral nerve injuries (PNIs) induce the retraction from the ventral horn of the synaptic collaterals of Ia afferents injured in the nerve, effectively removing Ia synapses from α-motoneurons. The loss of Ia input impairs functional recovery and could explain, in part, better recovery after PNIs with better Ia synaptic preservation. Synaptic losses correlate with injury severity, speed, and efficiency of muscle reinnervation and requires ventral microglia activation. It is unknown whether this plasticity is age dependent. In neonates, axotomized motoneurons and sensory neurons undergo apoptosis, but after postnatal day 10 most survive. The goal of this study was to analyze vesicular glutamate transporter 1 (VGluT1)-labeled Ia synapses (which also include II afferents) after nerve crush in 10 day old rats, a PNI causing little Ia/II synapse loss in adult rats. We confirmed fast and efficient reinnervation of leg muscles; however, a massive number of VGluT1/Ia/II synapses were permanently lost. This synap...

Functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS) of GABA at 3 T poses additional challenges compared with fMRS of other metabolites because of the difficulties of measuring GABA levels; GABA is present in the brain at relatively low concentrations, and its signal is overlapped by higher concentration metabolites. Using 7 T fMRS, GABA levels have been shown to decrease specifically during motor learning (and not during a control task). Though the use of 7 T is appealing, access is limited. For GABA fMRS to be widely accessible, it is essential to develop this method at 3 T. Nine healthy right-handed participants completed a motor learning and a control button-pressing task. fMRS data were acquired from the left sensorimotor cortex during the task using a continuous GABA-edited MEGA-PRESS acquisition at 3 T. We found no significant changes in GABA+/tCr, Glx/tCr, or Glu/tCr levels in either task; however, we show a positive relationship between motor learning and glutamate levels both at rest and at the star...

Learning to predict threat is of adaptive importance, but aversive memory can also become disadvantageous and burdensome in clinical conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Pavlovian fear conditioning is a laboratory model of aversive memory and thought to rely on structural synaptic reconfiguration involving matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)9 signaling. It has recently been suggested that the MMP9-inhibiting antibiotic doxycycline, applied before acquisition training in humans, reduces fear memory retention after one week. This previous study used cued delay fear conditioning, in which predictors and outcomes overlap in time. However, temporal separation of predictors and outcomes is common in clinical conditions. Learning the association of temporally separated events requires a partly different neural circuitry, for which the role of MMP9 signaling is not yet known. Here, we investigate the impact of doxycycline on long-interval (15 s) trace fear conditioning in a randomized controlled tri...

Rhythmic neural activity, which coordinates brain regions and neurons to achieve multiple brain functions, is impaired in many diseases. Despite the therapeutic potential of driving brain rhythms, methods to noninvasively target deep brain regions are limited. Accordingly, we recently introduced a noninvasive stimulation approach using flickering lights and sounds (“flicker”). Flicker drives rhythmic activity in deep and superficial brain regions. Gamma flicker spurs immune function, clears pathogens, and rescues memory performance in mice with amyloid pathology. Here, we present substantial improvements to this approach that is flexible, user-friendly, and generalizable across multiple experimental settings and species. We present novel open-source methods for flicker stimulation across rodents and humans. We demonstrate rapid, cross-species induction of rhythmic activity without behavioral confounds in multiple settings from electrophysiology to neuroimaging. This flicker approach provides an exceptional...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a major cause of disability in adults. MDD is both a comorbidity and a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and regular physical exercise has been associated with reduced incidence and severity of MDD and AD. Irisin is an exercise-induced myokine derived from proteolytic processing of fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5). FNDC5/irisin is reduced in the brains of AD patients and mouse models. However, whether brain FNDC5/irisin expression is altered in depression remains elusive. Here, we investigate changes in fndc5 expression in postmortem brain tissue from MDD individuals and mouse models of depression. We found decreased fndc5 expression in the MDD prefrontal cortex, both with and without psychotic traits. We further demonstrate that the induction of depressive-like behavior in male mice by lipopolysaccharide decreased fndc5 expression in the frontal cortex, but not in the hippocampus. Conversely, chronic corticosterone administration increased...

In the article, “The Planning Horizon for Movement Sequences,” by Giacomo Ariani, Neda Kordjazi, J. Andrew Pruszynski, and Jörn Diedrichsen, which published online on March 22, 2021, …

Here, we describe the development, structure, and effectiveness of an outreach program, DrosoPHILA, that leverages the tools of our fly neurodevelopmental research program at the University of Pennsylvania to reinforce the biology curriculum in local public schools. DrosoPHILA was developed and is sustained by a continued collaboration between members of the Bashaw lab, experienced outreach educators, and teachers in the School District of Philadelphia. Since the program’s inception, we have collaborated with 18 teachers and over 2,400 students. Student outcome data indicates significant positive attitude shifts around science identity and grade-appropriate knowledge gains. Significance statement Outreach programming creates connections between scientists and their communities while expanding students’ perception of what science entails and who practices it. As such, outreach programming can act as one part of a multi-pronged approach to diversify the scientific workforce. To build sustainable, effectiv...

Hippocampal neuronal activity at a time preceding stimulus onset affects episodic memory performance. We hypothesized that neuronal activity preceding an event supports successful memory formation; therefore, we explored whether a characterized encoding-associated brain activity, viz. the neuronal activity preceding a stimulus, predicts subsequent memory formation. To address this issue, we assessed the activity of single neurons recorded from the hippocampus in humans, while participants performed word memory tasks. Human hippocampal single-unit activity elicited by a fixation cue preceding words increased the firing rates and predicted whether the words are recalled in a subsequent memory test; this indicated that successful memory formation in humans can be predicted by a preceding stimulus activity during encoding. However, the predictive effect of preceding stimulus activity did not occur during retrieval. These findings suggest that the preparative arrangement of brain activity prior to stimulus enco...

Oxaliplatin is a platinum-based chemotherapeutic agent that causes cold and mechanical allodynia in up to 90% of patients. Silent Nav1.8-positive nociceptive cold sensors have been shown to be unmasked by oxaliplatin, and this event has been causally linked to the development of cold allodynia. We examined the effects of pregabalin on oxaliplatin-evoked unmasking of cold sensitive neurons using mice expressing GCaMP-3 in all sensory neurons. Intravenous injection of pregabalin significantly ameliorates cold allodynia, while decreasing the number of cold sensitive neurons by altering their excitability and temperature thresholds. The silenced neurons are predominantly medium/large mechano-cold sensitive neurons, corresponding to the ‘silent’ cold sensors activated during neuropathy. Deletion of α2δ1 subunits abolished the effects of pregabalin on both cold allodynia and the silencing of sensory neurons. Thus, these results define a novel, peripheral inhibitory effect of pregabalin on the excitability of ‘si...