Cognitive control is crucially involved in making (dis)honest decisions. However, the precise nature of this role has been hotly debated. Is honesty an intuitive response, or is will power needed to override an intuitive inclination to cheat? A reconciliation of these conflicting views proposes that cognitive control enables dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it allows those who are generally honest to cheat. Thus, cognitive control does not promote (dis)honesty per se; it depends on one's moral default. In the present study, we tested this proposal using electroencephalograms in humans (males and females) in combination with an independent localizer (Stroop task) to mitigate the problem of reverse inference. Our analysis revealed that the neural signature evoked by cognitive control demands in the Stroop task can be used to estimate (dis)honest choices in an independent cheating task, providing converging evidence that cognitive control can indeed help honest participants to cheat, whereas it fa...

The ability to stop an already initiated action is paramount to adaptive behavior. Much scientific debate in the field of human action-stopping currently focuses on two interrelated questions. (1) Which cognitive and neural processes uniquely underpin the implementation of inhibitory control when actions are stopped after explicit stop signals, and which processes are instead commonly evoked by all salient signals, even those that do not require stopping? (2) Why do purported (neuro)physiological signatures of inhibition occur at two different latencies after stop signals? Here, we address both questions via two preregistered experiments that combined measurements of corticospinal excitability, EMG, and whole-scalp EEG. Adult human subjects performed a stop signal task that also contained “ignore” signals: equally salient signals that did not require stopping but rather completion of the Go response. We found that both stop- and ignore signals produced equal amounts of early-latency inhibition of corticosp...

Ana Rita Nunes, Michael Gliksberg, Susana A. M. Varela, Magda Teles, Einav Wircer, et al. (see pages [8742–8760][1]) Oxytocin has important roles in social behaviors, such as pair-bonding, parenting, social affiliation, and aggression, in birds and mammals. It also regulates stress responses,

The mechanisms underlying accumulation of Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related tau pathology outside of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in older adults are unknown but crucial to understanding cognitive decline. A growing body of evidence from human and animal studies strongly implicates neural connectivity in the propagation of tau in humans, but the pathways of neocortical tau spread and its consequences for cognitive function are not well understood. Using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and tau PET imaging from a sample of 97 male and female cognitively normal older adults, we examined MTL structures involved in medial parietal tau accumulation and associations with memory function. Functional connectivity between hippocampus (HC) and retrosplenial cortex (RsC), a key region of the medial parietal lobe, was associated with tau in medial parietal lobe. By contrast, connectivity between entorhinal cortex (EC) and RsC did not correlate with medial parietal lobe tau. Further, greater ...

Errors that result from a mismatch between predicted movement outcomes and sensory afference are used to correct ongoing movements through feedback control and to adapt feedforward control of future movements. The cerebellum has been identified as a critical part of the neural circuit underlying implicit adaptation across a wide variety of movements (reaching, gait, eye movements, and speech). The contribution of this structure to feedback control is less well understood. Although it has recently been shown in the speech domain that individuals with cerebellar degeneration produce larger online corrections for sensory perturbations than control participants, similar behavior has not been observed in other motor domains. Currently, comparisons across domains are limited by different population samples and potential ceiling effects in existing tasks. To assess the relationship between changes in feedforward and feedback control associated with cerebellar degeneration across motor domains, we evaluated adapti...

Apolipoprotein E (APOE), one of the primary lipoproteins in the brain has three isoforms in humans, APOE2, APOE3, and APOE4. APOE4 is the most well-established risk factor increasing the predisposition for Alzheimer's disease (AD). The presence of the APOE4 allele alone is shown to cause synaptic defects in neurons and recent studies have identified multiple pathways directly influenced by APOE4. However, the mechanisms underlying APOE4-induced synaptic dysfunction remain elusive. Here, we report that the acute exposure of primary cortical neurons or synaptoneurosomes to APOE4 leads to a significant decrease in global protein synthesis. Primary cortical neurons were derived from male and female embryos of Sprague Dawley (SD) rats or C57BL/6J mice. Synaptoneurosomes were prepared from P30 male SD rats. APOE4 treatment also abrogates the NMDA-mediated translation response indicating an alteration of synaptic signaling. Importantly, we demonstrate that both APOE3 and APOE4 generate a distinct translation resp...

We propose a model of the main rhythms in the hippocampal CA1 field: theta rhythm, slow, middle, and fast gamma rhythms, and ripples oscillations. We have based this on data obtained from animals behaving freely. We have considered the modes of neuronal discharges and the occurrence of local field potential (LFP) oscillations in the theta and non-theta states at different inputs from the CA3 field, the medial entorhinal cortex, and the medial septum. In our work, we tried to reproduce the main experimental phenomena about rhythms in the CA1 field: the coupling of neurons to the phase of rhythms, cross-rhythm phase-phase and phase-amplitude coupling. Using computational experiments, we have proved the hypothesis that the descending phase of the theta rhythm in the CA1 field is formed by the input from the CA3 field via the Shaffer collaterals, and the ascending phase of the theta rhythm is formed by the inhibitory postsynaptic potentials from CCK basket cells. The slow gamma rhythm is coupled to the descend...

Post-encoding coordinated reactivation of memory traces distributed throughout interconnected brain regions is thought to be critical for consolidation of memories. However, little is known about the role of neural circuit pathways during post-learning periods for consolidation of memories. To investigate this question, we optogenetically silenced the inputs from both auditory cortex (AuV/TeA) and thalamus (MGm/PIN) in the lateral amygdala (LA) for 15 min immediately following auditory fear conditioning (FC) and examined its effect on fear memory formation in mice of both sexes. Optogenetic inhibition of both inputs disrupted long-term fear memory formation tested 24 h after FC. This effect was specific such that the same inhibition did not affect short-term memory and context-dependent memory. Moreover, long-term memory was intact if the inputs were inhibited at much later time points after FC (3 h or 1 d after FC), indicating that optical inhibition for 15 min itself does not produce any non-specific del...

Persistent anion conductances through GABAA receptors (GABAAR) are important modulators of neuronal excitability. However, it is currently unknown how the amplitudes of these currents vary amongst different cell types in the human neocortex, particularly amongst diverse GABAergic interneurons. We have recorded 101 interneurons in and near layer 1 from cortical tissue surgically resected from both male and female patients, visualised 84 of them and measured tonic GABAAR currents in 48 cells with an intracellular [Cl-] of 65 mM and in the presence of 5 µM GABA. We compare these tonic currents amongst five groups of interneurons divided by firing properties and four types of interneuron defined by axonal distributions; rosehip, neurogliaform, stalked-bouton, layers 2-3 innervating and a pool of other cells. Interestingly, the rosehip cell, a type of interneuron only described thus far in human tissue, and layers 2-3 innervating cells exhibit larger tonic currents than other layer 1 interneurons, such as neuro...