Hypothalamic melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) neurons are important regulators of multiple physiological processes, such as sleep, feeding, and memory. Despite the increasing interest in their neuronal functions, the molecular mechanism underlying MCH neuron development remains poorly understood. We report that a three-dimensional culture of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) can generate hypothalamic-like tissues containing MCH-positive neurons, which reproduce morphologic maturation, neuronal connectivity, and neuropeptide/neurotransmitter phenotype of native MCH neurons. Using this in vitro system, we demonstrate that Hedgehog (Hh) signaling serves to produce major neurochemical subtypes of MCH neurons characterized by the presence or absence of cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART). Without exogenous Hh signals, mESCs initially differentiated into dorsal hypothalamic/prethalamic progenitors and finally into MCH+CART+ neurons through a specific intermediate progenitor state. Conversely...

As a predominately positive emotion, nostalgia serves various adaptive functions, including a recently revealed analgesic effect. The current fMRI study aimed to explore the neural mechanisms underlying the nostalgia-induced analgesic effect on noxious thermal stimuli of different intensities. Human participants’ (males and females) behavior results showed that the nostalgia paradigm significantly reduced participants’ perception of pain, particularly at low pain intensities. fMRI analysis revealed that analgesia was related to decreased brain activity in pain-related brain regions, including the lingual and parahippocampal gyrus. Notably, anterior thalamic activation during the nostalgia stage predicted posterior parietal thalamus activation during the pain stage, suggesting that the thalamus might play a key role as a central functional linkage in the analgesic effect. Moreover, while thalamus-PAG functional connectivity was found to be related to nostalgic strength, PAG-dlPFC functional connectivity was...

Pain-related sensory input is processed in the spinal dorsal horn (SDH) before being relayed to the brain. That processing profoundly influences whether stimuli are correctly or incorrectly perceived as painful. Significant advances have been made in identifying the types of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that comprise the SDH, and there is some information about how neuron types are connected, but it remains unclear how the overall circuit processes sensory input or how that processing is disrupted under chronic pain conditions. To explore SDH function, we developed a computational model of the circuit that is tightly constrained by experimental data. Our model comprises conductance-based neuron models that reproduce the characteristic firing patterns of spinal neurons. Excitatory and inhibitory neuron populations, defined by their expression of genetic markers, spiking pattern, or morphology, were synaptically connected according to available qualitative data. Using a genetic algorithm, synaptic weigh...

The human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC, approximately corresponding to Brodmann areas 9 and 46) has demonstrable roles in diverse executive functions such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, planning, inhibition, and abstract reasoning. However, it remains unclear whether this is the result of one functionally homogeneous region or whether there are functional subdivisions within the DLPFC. Here, we divided the DLPFC into seven areas along rostral-caudal and dorsal-ventral axes anatomically and explored their respective patterns of structural and functional connectivity. In vivo probabilistic tractography (11 females and 13 males) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (57 females and 21 males) were employed to map out the patterns of connectivity from each DLPFC subregion. Structural connectivity demonstrated graded intra-regional connectivity within the DLPFC. The patterns of structural connectivity between the DLPFC subregions and other cortical areas revealed that the do...

Transport of choline via the neuronal high-affinity choline transporter (CHT; SLC5A7 ) is essential for cholinergic terminals to synthesize and release acetylcholine (ACh). In humans, we previously demonstrated an association between a common CHT coding substitution (rs1013940; Ile89Val) and reduced attentional control as well as attenuated frontal cortex activation. Here, we used a CRISPR/Cas9 approach to generate mice expressing the I89V substitution and assessed, in vivo , CHT-mediated choline transport, and ACh release. Relative to wild type (WT) mice, CHT-mediated clearance of choline in male and female mice expressing one or two Val89 alleles was reduced by over 80% cortex and over 50% in striatum. Choline clearance in CHT Val89 mice was further reduced by neuronal inactivation. Deficits in ACh release, 5 and 10 min after repeated depolarization at a low, behaviorally relevant frequency, support an attenuated reloading capacity of cholinergic neurons in mutant mice. The density of CHTs in total synap...

The ability to comprehend phrases is an essential integrative property of the brain. Here we evaluate the neural processes that enable the transition from single word processing to a minimal compositional scheme. Previous research has reported conflicting timing effects of composition, and disagreement persists with respect to inferior frontal and posterior temporal contributions. To address these issues, 19 patients (10 male, 19 female) implanted with penetrating depth or surface subdural intracranial electrodes heard auditory recordings of adjective-noun, pseudoword-noun and adjective-pseudoword phrases and judged whether the phrase matched a picture. Stimulus-dependent alterations in broadband gamma activity, low frequency power and phase-locking values across the language-dominant left hemisphere were derived. This revealed a mosaic located on the lower bank of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), in which closely neighboring cortical sites displayed exclusive sensitivity to either lexicality...

Paternal environmental perturbations can influence the physiology and behavior of offspring. For example, our previous work showed reduced cocaine reinforcement in male, but not female, progeny of rat sires that self-administered cocaine. The information transfer from sire to progeny may occur through epigenetic marks in sperm, encompassing alterations in small noncoding RNAs including microRNAs (miRNAs) and/or DNA methylation. Here, no reliable changes in miRNAs in the sperm of cocaine- relative to saline-experienced sires were identified. In contrast, 272 differentially methylated regions were observed in sperm between these groups. Two hypomethylated promoter regions in the sperm of cocaine-experienced rats were upstream of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1a ( Cdkn1a ). Cdkn1a mRNA also was selectively increased in the nucleus accumbens of cocaine-sired male (but not female) offspring. Cocaine self-administration also enhanced Cdkn1a expression in the accumbens of cocaine-sired rats. These results sug...

In the article “MEYE: Web App for Translational and Real-Time Pupillometry,” by Raffaele Mazziotti, Fabio Carrara, Aurelia Viglione, Leonardo Lupori, Luca Lo …

The airways are densely innervated by sensory afferent nerves, whose activation regulates respiration and triggers defensive reflexes (e.g., cough, bronchospasm). Airway innervation is heterogeneous, and distinct afferent subsets have distinct functional responses. However, little is known of the innervation patterns of subsets within the lung. A neuroanatomical map is critical for understanding afferent activation under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. Here, we quantified the innervation of the mouse lung by vagal and dorsal root ganglion (DRG) sensory subsets defined by the expression of Pirt (all afferents), 5HT3 (vagal nodose afferents), Tac1 (tachykinergic afferents), and transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 channel (TRPV1; defensive/nociceptive afferents) using Cre-mediated reporter expression. We found that vagal afferents innervate almost all conducting airways and project into the alveolar region, whereas DRG afferents only innervate large airways. Of the two vagal ganglia, onl...

Humans deftly parse statistics from sequences. Some theories posit that humans learn these statistics by forming cognitive maps, or underlying representations of the latent space which links items in the sequence. Here, an item in the sequence is a node, and the probability of transitioning between two items is an edge. Sequences can then be generated from walks through the latent space, with different spaces giving rise to different sequence statistics. Individual or group differences in sequence learning can be modeled by changing the time scale over which estimates of transition probabilities are built, or in other words, by changing the amount of temporal discounting. Latent space models with temporal discounting bear a resemblance to models of navigation through Euclidean spaces. However, few explicit links have been made between predictions from Euclidean spatial navigation and neural activity during human sequence learning. Here, we use a combination of behavioral modeling and intracranial encephalo...