Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with population receptive field (pRF) mapping allows for associating positions on the visual cortex to areas on the visual field. Apart from applications in healthy subjects, this method can also be used to examine dysfunctions in patients suffering from partial visual field losses. While such objective measurement of visual deficits (scotoma) is of great importance for, e.g., longitudinal studies addressing treatment effects, it requires a thorough assessment of accuracy and reproducibility of the results obtained. In this study, we quantified the reproducibility of pRF mapping results within and across sessions in case of central visual field loss in a group of 15 human subjects. We simulated scotoma by masking a central area of 2° radius from stimulation to establish ground-truth conditions. This study was performed on a 7 T ultra-high field MRI scanner for increased sensitivity. We found excellent intra- and intersession reproducibility for the pRF ...

Objects in our visual environment often move unpredictably and can suddenly speed up or slow down. The ability to account for acceleration when interacting with moving objects can be critical for survival. Here, we investigate how human observers track an accelerating target with their eyes and predict its time of reappearance after a temporal occlusion by making an interceptive hand movement. Before occlusion, observers smoothly tracked the accelerating target with their eyes. At the time of occlusion, observers made a predictive saccade to the location where they subsequently intercepted the target with a quick pointing movement. We tested how observers integrated target motion information by comparing three alternative models that describe time-to-contact (TTC) based on the (1) final target velocity sample before occlusion, (2) average target velocity before occlusion, or (3) final target velocity and the rate of target acceleration. We show that observers were able to accurately track the accelerating ...

Efforts to explain complex human decisions have focused on competing theories emphasizing utility and narrative mechanisms. These are difficult to distinguish using behavior alone. Both narrative and utility theories have been proposed to explain juror decisions, which are among the most consequential complex decisions made in a modern society. Here, we asked jury-eligible male and female subjects to rate the strength of a series of criminal cases while recording the resulting patterns of brain activation. We compared patterns of brain activation associated with evidence accumulation to patterns of brain activation derived from a large neuroimaging database to look for signatures of the cognitive processes associated with different models of juror decision making. Evidence accumulation correlated with multiple narrative processes, including reading and recall. Of the cognitive processes traditionally viewed as components of utility, activation patterns associated with uncertainty, but not value, were more ...

The protease caspase-3 is a key mediator of apoptotic programmed cell death. But weak or transient caspase activity can contribute to neuronal differentiation, axonal pathfinding, and synaptic long-term depression. Despite the importance of sublethal, or nonapoptotic, caspase activity in neurodevelopment and neural plasticity, there has been no simple method for mapping and quantifying nonapoptotic caspase activity in rodent brains. We therefore generated a transgenic mouse expressing a highly sensitive and specific fluorescent reporter of caspase activity, with peak signal localized to the nucleus. As a proof of concept, we first obtained evidence that nonapoptotic caspase activity influences neurophysiology in an amygdalar circuit. Then focusing on the amygdala, we were able to quantify a sex-specific persistent elevation in caspase activity in females after restraint stress. This simple in vivo caspase activity reporter will facilitate systems-level studies of apoptotic and nonapoptotic phenomena in beh...

Migraine is believed to be initiated by neuronal activity in the CNS that triggers excitation of nociceptive trigeminal ganglion (TG) nerve fibers innervating the meninges and thus causes a unilateral throbbing headache. Drugs that precipitate or potentiate migraine are known to elevate intracellular levels of the cyclic nucleotides cAMP or cGMP, while anti-migraine treatments couple to signaling pathways that reduce cAMP or cGMP, suggesting an involvement of these cyclic nucleotides in migraine. Members of the HCN ion channel family are activated by direct binding of cAMP or cGMP, suggesting in turn that a member of this family may be a critical trigger of migraine. Here, we show that pharmacological block or targeted genetic deletion of HCN2 abolished migraine-like pain in three rodent migraine models (in both sexes). Induction of migraine-like pain in these models triggered expression of the protein C-FOS, a marker of neuronal activity, in neurons of the trigeminocervical complex (TCC), where TG neurons...

Reaction time is accelerated if a loud (startling) sound accompanies the cue—the “StartReact” effect. Animal studies revealed a reticulospinal substrate for the startle reflex; StartReact may similarly involve the reticulospinal tract, but this is currently uncertain. Here we trained two female macaque monkeys to perform elbow flexion/extension movements following a visual cue. The cue was sometimes accompanied by a loud sound, generating a StartReact effect in electromyogram response latency, as seen in humans. Extracellular recordings were made from antidromically identified corticospinal neurons in primary motor cortex (M1), from the reticular formation (RF), and from the spinal cord (SC; C5–C8 segments). After loud sound, task-related activity was suppressed in M1 (latency, 70–200 ms after cue), but was initially enhanced (70–80 ms) and then suppressed (140–210 ms) in RF. SC activity was unchanged. In a computational model, we simulated a motoneuron pool receiving input from different proportions of th...

Pregnancy is associated with extraordinary plasticity in the maternal brain. Studies in humans and other mammals suggest extensive structural and functional remodeling of the female brain during and after pregnancy. However, we understand remarkably little about the molecular underpinnings of this natural phenomenon. To gain insight into pregnancy-associated hippocampal plasticity, we performed single nucleus RNA-seq and single nucleus ATAC-seq from the mouse hippocampus before, during, and after pregnancy. We identified cell-type-specific transcriptional and epigenetic signatures associated with pregnancy and post-partum adaptation. In addition, we analyzed receptor-ligand interactions and transcription factor motifs that inform hippocampal cell type identity and provide evidence of pregnancy-associated adaption. In total, this data provides a unique resource of coupled transcriptional and epigenetic data across a dynamic time period in the mouse hippocampus and suggests opportunities for functional inter...

Video recording is essential for behavioral neuroscience research, but the majority of available systems suffer from poor cost-to-functionality ratio. Commercial options frequently come at high financial cost that prohibits scalability and throughput, whereas DIY solutions often require significant expertise and time investment unaffordable to many researchers. To address this, we combined a low-cost Raspberry Pi microcomputer, DIY electronics peripheries, freely available open-source firmware, and custom 3D printed casings to create Pi USB Cam, a simple yet powerful and highly versatile video recording solution. Pi USB Cam is constructed using affordable and widely available components and requires no expertise to build and implement. The result is a system that functions as a plug-and-play USB camera that can be easily installed in various animal testing and housing sites and is readily compatible with popular behavioral and neural recording software. Here, we provide a comprehensive parts list and step-...

fMRI studies that investigate somatotopic tactile representations in the human cortex typically use either block or phase-encoded stimulation designs. Event-related (ER) designs allow for more flexible and unpredictable stimulation sequences than the other methods, but they are less efficient. Here, we compared an efficiency-optimized fast ER design (2.8-s average intertrial interval; ITI) to a conventional slow ER design (8-s average ITI) for mapping voxelwise fingertip tactile tuning properties in the sensorimotor cortex of six participants at 7 Tesla. The fast ER design yielded more reliable responses compared with the slow ER design, but with otherwise similar tuning properties. Concatenating the fast and slow ER data, we demonstrate in each individual brain the existence of two separate somatotopically-organized tactile representations of the fingertips, one in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) on the postcentral gyrus, and the other shared across the motor and premotor cortices on the precentral ...

Children exposed prenatally to opioids are at an increased risk for behavioral problems and executive function deficits. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala (AMG) regulate executive function and social behavior and are sensitive to opioids prenatally. Opioids can bind to toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) to activate microglia, which may be developmentally important for synaptic pruning. Therefore, we tested the effects of perinatal morphine exposure on executive function and social behavior in male and female mouse offspring, along with microglial-related and synaptic-related outcomes. Dams were injected once daily subcutaneously with saline ( n  = 8) or morphine (MO; 10 mg/kg; n  = 12) throughout pregestation, gestation, and lactation until offspring were weaned on postnatal day 21 (P21). Male MO offspring had impairments in attention and accuracy in the five-choice serial reaction time task, while female MO offspring were less affected. Targeted gene expression analysis at P21 in the PFC identified altera...