In the article “Transient Response of Basal Ganglia Network in Healthy and Low-Dopamine State,” by Kingshuk Chakravarty, Sangheeta Roy, Aniruddha Sinha, Atsushi Nambu, Satomi Chiken, Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski, and Arvind Kumar, which was published online on February 9, 2022 …

In the article, “The Paraventricular Thalamic Nucleus and Its Projections in Regulating Reward and Context Associations,” by Dillon S. McDevitt, Quinn W. Wade, Greer E. McKendrick, Jacob Nelsen, Mariya …

In the article “Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Posterior Parietal Cortex Increases Nontarget Retrieval During Visual Working Memory,” by Shengfeng Ye, Menglin Wu, Congyun Yao, Gui Xue, and Ying Cai, which published …

Status epilepticus (SE) links to high mortality and morbidity. Considering the neuroprotective property of baicalein (BA), we investigated its effects on post-SE neuronal injury via the NLRP3/GSDMD pathway. Mice were subjected to SE modeling and BA interference, with seizure severity and learning and memory abilities evaluated. The histological changes, neurological injury and neuron-specific enolase (NSE)-positive cell number in hippocampal CA1 region, and cell death were assessed. Levels of the NOD-, LRR-, and pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3)/gasdermin-D (GSDMD) pathway-related proteins, inflammatory factors, and Iba-1 + NLRP3+ and Iba-1 + GSDMD-N+ cells were determined. BA ameliorated post-SE cognitive dysfunction and neuronal injury in mice, as evidenced by shortened escape latency, increased number of crossing the target quadrant within 60 s and the time staying in the target quadrant, alleviated hippocampal damage, increased viable cell number, decreased neuronal injury, and increased NSE-positive c...

Psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and depression, are highly comorbid in people with epilepsy. However, the mechanisms mediating the shared pathophysiology are currently unknown. There is considerable evidence implicating the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in the network communication of anxiety and fear, a process demonstrated to involve parvalbumin-positive (PV) interneurons. The loss of PV interneurons has been well described in the hippocampus of chronically epileptic mice and in postmortem human tissue of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). We hypothesize that a loss of PV interneurons in the BLA may contribute to comorbid mood disorders in epilepsy. To test this hypothesis, we employed a ventral intrahippocampal kainic acid model of TLE in mice, which exhibits profound behavioral deficits associated with chronic epilepsy. We demonstrate a loss of PV interneurons and dysfunction of the remaining PV interneurons in the BLA of chronically epileptic mice. Furthermore, we demonstrate altered pr...

Cannabinoid receptor-1 (CB1R) signaling in the dorsal striatum regulates the shift from flexible to habitual behavior in instrumental outcome devaluation. Based on prior work establishing individual-, sex-, and experience-dependent differences in pavlovian behaviors, we predicted a role for dorsomedial striatum (DMS) CB1R signaling in driving rigid responding in pavlovian autoshaping and outcome devaluation. We trained male and female Long Evans rats in pavlovian lever autoshaping (PLA). We gave intra-DMS infusions of the CB1R inverse agonist, rimonabant, before satiety-induced outcome devaluation test sessions, where we sated rats on training pellets or home cage chow and tested them in brief nonreinforced PLA sessions. Overall, inhibition of DMS CB1R signaling prevented pavlovian outcome devaluation but did not affect behavior in reinforced PLA sessions. Males were sensitive to devaluation while females were not, and DMS CB1R blockade impaired devaluation sensitivity in males. Because these results sugge...

Mammalian parenting is an unusually demanding commitment. How has the reward system been co-opted to ensure parental care? Previous work has implicated the lateral habenula (LHb), an epithalamic nucleus, as a potential intersection of parenting behavior and reward. Here, we examine the role of the LHb in the maternal behavior of naturally parturient primiparous mouse dams. We show that kainic acid lesions of the LHb induced a severe maternal neglect phenotype in dams toward their biological pups. Next, we demonstrate that chronic chemogenetic inactivation of the LHb using inhibitory DREADDs impaired acquisition and performance of various maternal behaviors, such as pup retrieval and nesting. We present a random intercept model suggesting LHb inactivation prevents the acquisition of pup retrieval, a novel maternal behavior in primiparous mouse dams, and decreases nest building performance, an already-established behavior, in primiparous mouse dams. Lastly, we examine the spatial histology of kainic acid-tre...

The subjective visual vertical (VV), the visually estimated direction of gravity, is essential for assessing vestibular function and visuospatial cognition. In this study, we aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying altered VV perception in stroke participants with unilateral spatial neglect (USN), specifically by examining their eye movement patterns during VV judgment tasks. Participants with USN demonstrated limited eye movement scanning along a rotating bar, often fixating on prominent ends, such as the top or bottom. This suggests a reflexive response to visually salient areas, potentially interfering with accurate VV perception. In contrast, participants without USN showed broader scanning around the center of the bar. Notably, participants with USN without frontal lobe lesions occasionally exhibited extended scanning that included the bar’s center, which was associated with accurate VV judgments. These findings suggest that (1) a tendency to fixate on peripheral, prominent areas and (2) fronta...

The human medial parietal cortex (MPC) is recruited during multiple cognitive processes. Previously, we demonstrated regions specific to recall of people or places and proposed that the functional organization of MPC mirrors the category selectivity defining the medial–lateral axis of the ventral–temporal cortex (VTC). However, prior work considered recall of people and places only, and VTC also shows object selectivity sandwiched between face- and scene-selective regions. Here, we tested a strong prediction of our proposal: like VTC, MPC should show a region specifically recruited during object recall, and its relative cortical position should mirror the one of VTC. While responses during people and place recall showed a striking replication of prior findings, we did not observe any evidence for object-recall effects within MPC, which differentiates it from the spatial organization in VTC. Importantly, beyond MPC, robust recall effects were observed for people, places, and objects on the lateral surface o...

Human face categorization has been extensively studied using event-related potentials (ERPs), positing the N170 ERP component as a robust neural marker of face categorization. Recently, the fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) approach relying on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) has also been used to investigate face categorization. FPVS studies consistently report strong bilateral SSVEP face categorization responses over the occipitotemporal cortex, with a right hemispheric dominance, closely mirroring the N170 scalp topography. However, it remains unclear whether SSVEP responses can be considered a proxy for the N170 or are driven by different components. To address this question, we recorded electrophysiological signals from observers viewing face and object images during FPVS and ERP paradigms. We quantified the FPVS response in the frequency domain and extracted ERP components, including the P1, N170, and P2, from both the FPVS time domain and ERP paradigms. Our results revealed littl...