The association between brain structural connectivity (BSC) and different subtypes of stroke has not been reported. The current study determined whether some BSC patterns may contribute to the risk of stroke. A two-sample, bidirectional, multivariate Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was performed. Genome-wide aggregated data for BSC were obtained by accessing the GWAS directory of the European Bioinformatics Institute (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas). Whole-brain diffusion MRI tractograms for 26,300 UK Biobank participants were reconstructed with the MRtrix3 standard pipeline followed by SIFT2 re-weighting. A co-localization analysis was performed to determine whether the association between BSC and stroke was driven by loci within genomic regions. Reverse MR was performed to evaluate potential stroke-induced changes in BSC. Left hemisphere (LH) somatomotor network-to-LH salience /ventral attention network white matter (WM) structural connectivity (SC) [OR = 1.30, P = 5.96×10−4, P value after Bonferroni c...

McLean Bolton is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience, a research institute with over 80 campuses in Germany and one in the United States. They emphasize training and partner with universities around the world to give graduate students access to cutting-edge labs. Based on her experience, Bolton believes it’s most important for trainees to build expertise in wide-ranging techniques and gain exposure to how science is conducted internationally. Read the interview below to learn why and how. Why is it important for trainees to learn new techniques? To be a successful scientist, you have to understand a particular problem. To understand a particular research question, you have to use multiple techniques. You can't say, "I'm an electrophysiologist, so I'm going to think of a question to be able to use my technique.” Part of our approach at Max Planck is to give students exposure to multiple techniques that could address a scientific question.

It's important to communicate with lay audiences about animal research, but what's an effective approach? Mar Sanchez, a member of SfN's Committee on Animal Research, advises being transparent and proactive to confront the pervasiveness of misleading messages from animal rights groups. Here, she offers advice on facilitating conversations, engaging institutions and activists, protecting yourself against attacks, and more.

Your next position doesn’t have to lock you into a career path. “There’s people transitioning all the time,” says Kip Ludwig, who’s steered his own career through academia, industry, federal agencies, and back into research. In this video, Ludwig draws on his experience hopping sectors to share encouragement and practical advice for transitioning into a different area of the field.

Making people feel welcome within a neuroscience department or program contributes to its collective strength and success. To effectively cultivate a more inclusive environment, grassroots efforts, incentive structures, and institutional leaders need to work together toward a common goal. In this discussion panel, institute and program leaders share challenges they have experienced, and the solutions used to achieve a more inclusive environment for neuroscientists and their work to prosper. Attendees are encouraged to bring their questions and experiences to share with the panelists. This discussion between institutional program heads is organized by SfN’s Neuroscience Training Committee. This webinar will be available to watch on-demand after the live broadcast.

This webinar is exclusive for SfN members. Please log in for access. Watch this interactive session as Paula Salamone and Agustín Ibañez discuss their recent JNeurosci paper, “Interoception Primes Emotional Processing: Multimodal Evidence from Neurodegeneration.” After the talk, JNeurosci Editor-in-Chief Marina Picciotto moderates a conversation. This webinar is also available as a podcast, as a part of Neuro Current: An SfN Journals Podcast series. All Neuro Current podcasts are also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Below is the significance statement of Interoception Primes Emotional Processing: Multimodal Evidence from Neurodegeneration, published on April 7, 2021, in JNeurosci and authored by Paula C. Salamone, Agustina Legaz, Lucas Sedeño, Sebastián Moguilner, Matías Fraile-Vazquez, Cecilia Gonzalez Campo, Sol Fittipaldi, Adrián Yoris, Magdalena Miranda, Agustina Birba, Agostina Galiani, Sofía Abrevaya, Alejandra Neely, Miguel Martorell Caro, Florencia Alifano, Roque Villagra, Florencia Anunziata, Maira Okada de Oliveira, Ricardo M. Pautassi, Andrea Slachevsky, Cecilia Serrano, Adolfo M. García, and Agustín Ibañez. Salamone, Legaz, et al. examined whether and how emotions are primed by interoceptive states combining multimodal measures in healthy controls and neurodegenerative models. In controls, negative emotion recognition and ongoing heart-evoked potential modulations were increased after interoception. These patterns were selectively disrupted in patients with atrophy across key interoceptive-emotional regions (e.g., the insula and the cingulate in frontotemporal dementia, frontostriatal networks in Parkinson’s disease), whereas persons with Alzheimer’s disease presented generalized emotional processing abnormalities with preserved interoceptive mechanisms. The integration of both domains was associated to the volume and connectivity (salience network) of canonical interoceptive-emotional hubs, critically involving the insula and the anterior cingulate. This study reveals multimodal markers of interoceptive-emotional priming, laying the groundwork for new agendas in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurology.

Reaching movements, while seemingly simple, involve complex motor control mechanisms that select specific trajectories from infinite possibilities. Despite the inherent variability in volitional movements, both humans and monkeys frequently exhibit stereotyped trajectories. The literature has offered numerous explanations for invariant trajectory shapes, including a common planning space in hand-space or joint-space, as well as factors like kinetic energy (KE) minimization and sensory feedback. However, since most studies have relied on single-session data, crucial insights into the motor principles guiding trajectory selection and their evolution through extended practice remain underexplored. This study fills this gap by investigating how specific trajectories are selected and evolve with practice across multiple sessions, using data from two rhesus monkeys (one male, one female) performing a reaching task in a biomechanically constrained 2D setup. Our behavioral study challenges the idea of a common pla...

This material summarizes the article Environmental Enrichment Partially Repairs Subcortical Mapping Errors in Ten-m3 Knock-Out Mice during an Early Critical Period, published on November 25, 2019, in eNeuro and authored by Peta Eggins, James Blok, Justin Petersen, Larissa Savvas, Lara Rogerson-Wood, Hannan Mansuri, Atomu Sawatari, and Catherine A. Leamey.

In addition to subject-matter expertise, skills such as leadership, management, and team building are crucial for navigating increasingly complex jobs and research collaboration opportunities in neuroscience.

Communicating the relationship between basic and translational research to nonscientists can be difficult. In this recording of the Public Advocacy Forum at Neuroscience 2019, learn how basic research is used by pharmaceutical companies and how to talk about these partnerships. You’ll also learn how to explain why advocating for research funding is an absolute necessity and the importance of collaborating to advance understanding and improve research outcomes.