A comprehensive analysis of everyday sound perception can be achieved using electroencephalography (EEG) with the concurrent acquisition of information about the environment. While extensive research has been dedicated to speech perception, the complexities of auditory perception within everyday environments, specifically the types of information and the key features to extract, remain less explored. Our study aims to systematically investigate the relevance of different feature categories: discrete sound-identity markers, general cognitive state information, and acoustic representations, including discrete sound onset, the envelope, and mel-spectrogram. Using continuous data analysis, we contrast different features in terms of their predictive power for unseen data and thus their distinct contributions to explaining neural data. For this, we analyze data from a complex audio-visual motor task using a naturalistic soundscape. The results demonstrated that the feature sets that explain the most neural varia...

It is widely believed that axons in the central nervous system of adult mammals do not regrow following injury. This failure is thought, at least in part, to underlie the limited recovery of function following injury to the brain or spinal cord. Some studies of fixed tissue have suggested that, counter to dogma, norepinephrine (NE) axons regrow following brain injury. Here, we have used in vivo two-photon microscopy in layer 1 of the primary somatosensory cortex in transgenic mice harboring a fluorophore selectively expressed in NE neurons. This protocol allowed us to explore the dynamic nature of NE axons following injury with the selective NE axon toxin N -(2-chloroethyl)- N -ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP4). Following DSP4, NE axons were massively depleted and then slowly and partially recovered their density over a period of weeks. This regrowth was dominated by new axons entering the imaged volume. There was almost no contribution from local sprouting from spared NE axons. Regrown axons did not appear ...

Cuprizone (CPZ) is a widely used toxin that induces demyelinating diseases in animal models, producing multiple sclerosis (MS)-like pathology in rodents. CPZ is one of the few toxins that triggers demyelination and subsequent remyelination following the cessation of its application. This study examines the functional consequences of CPZ-induced demyelination and the subsequent recovery of neural communication within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), with a particular focus on interhemispheric connectivity via the corpus callosum (CC). By employing wide-field, high-speed, voltage-sensitive dye imaging, we were able to provide real-time mapping of neural activity in the ACC of CPZ-fed mice. Although we could not record physiological signals from the CC, the results demonstrated a notable impairment in interhemispheric connections within the ACC via the CC, with the most pronounced loss observed in a specific coronal slice among a series of slices examined. Notably, the latency of neural signal propagation...

The full complement of ion channels which influence insect auditory mechanotransduction and the mechanisms by which their influence is exerted remain unclear. Shal (Kv4), a Shaker family member encoding voltage-gated potassium channels in Drosophila melanogaster , has been shown to localize to dendrites in some neuron types, suggesting the potential role of Shal in Drosophila hearing, including mechanotransduction. A GFP trap was used to visualize the localization of the Shal channel in Johnston's organ neurons responsible for hearing in the antenna. Shal protein was localized strongly to the cell body and inner dendritic segment of sensory neurons. It was also detectable in the sensory cilium, suggesting its involvement not only in general auditory function but specifically in mechanotransduction. Electrophysiological recordings to assess neural responses to auditory stimuli in mutant Shal flies revealed significant decreases in auditory responses. Laser Doppler vibrometer recordings indicated abnormal an...

A unique pool of immature glutamatergic neurons in the primate amygdala, known as the paralaminar nucleus (PL), are maturing between infancy and adolescence. The PL is a potential substrate for the steep growth curve of amygdala volume during this developmental period. A microglial component is also embedded among the PL neurons and likely supports local neuronal maturation and emerging synaptogenesis. Microglia may alter neuronal growth following environmental perturbations such as stress. Using multiple measures in rhesus macaques, we found that microglia in the infant primate PL had relatively large somas and a small arbor size. In contrast, microglia in the adolescent PL had a smaller soma and a larger dendritic arbor. We then examined microglial morphology in the PL after a novel maternal separation protocol, to examine the effects of early life stress. After maternal separation, the microglia had increased soma size, arbor size, and complexity. Surprisingly, strong effects were seen not only in the i...

The social environment has long been recognized to play an important role in substance use, which is often modeled in rodents using operant conditioning. However, most operant chambers only accommodate one rodent at a time. We present PeerPub—a unique social operant chamber. PeerPub employs touch sensors to track the licking behavior on drinking spouts. When the number of licks meets a set reinforcement schedule, it dispenses a drop of solution with a fixed volume as a reward at the tip of the spout. A radio frequency identification (RFID) chip implanted in each rat’s skull identifies it throughout the experiment. The system is managed by a Raspberry Pi computer. We evaluated PeerPub using Sprague Dawley rats in daily 1 h sessions, where supersac (a glucose and saccharin solution) was provided under a fixed-ratio five schedule. We discovered that male rats consumed more supersac in dual rat conditions compared with single rat conditions. These findings illustrate PeerPub’s effectiveness in modeling the int...

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 …

Selectively stopping individual parts of planned or ongoing movements is an everyday motor skill. For example, while walking in public, you may stop yourself from waving at a stranger who you mistook for a friend while continuing to walk. Despite its ubiquity, our ability to selectively stop actions is limited. Canceling one action can delay the execution of other simultaneous actions. This stopping-interference effect on continuing actions during selective stopping may be attributed to a global inhibitory mechanism with widespread effects on the motor system. Previous studies have characterized a transient global reduction in corticomotor excitability by combining brain stimulation with electromyography (EMG). Here, we examined whether global motor inhibition during selective stopping can be measured peripherally and with high temporal resolution using EMG alone. Eighteen participants performed a bimanual anticipatory response inhibition task with their index fingers while maintaining a tonic contraction ...

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 …