Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Idiosyncratic, Retinotopic Bias In Face Identification Modulated By Familiarity, Matteo Visconti Di Oleggio Castello, Morgan Taylor, Patrick Cavanagh, Maria Ida Gobbini

Dartmouth Scholarship

The perception of gender and age of unfamiliar faces is reported to vary idiosyncratically across retinal locations such that, for example, the same androgynous face may appear to be male at one location but female at another. Here we test spatial heterogeneity for the recognition of the identity of personally familiar faces in human participants. We found idiosyncratic biases that were stable within participants and that varied more across locations for low as compared to high familiar faces. These data suggest that like face gender and age, face identity is processed, in part, by independent populations of neurons monitoring restricted …

An Interview With Cesare Montecucco, Mandë Holford, Andreas Rummel

Publications and Research

Cesare Montecucco is a member of the board of various leading scientific journals. His research focus is on the regeneration of the peripheral nervous system and on the mechanisms of action of toxins and related diseases, including tetanus, botulism, anthrax and Helicobacter pylori-associated diseases. In this interview, we talked to Cesare Montecucco about his career, learning and culture.

Complexities And Challenges Of Nonduality, Elizabeth Stephens

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

States of consciousness referred to as nonduality, awakening, enlightenment, moksha, peak experience, unitive states, or void states, among other terms, have garnered increasing secular attention and have become a topic of psychological and neuroscientific research. A review of the literature revealed many challenges to studying this set of states, such as inconsistent conceptualizations, a variety of models and theories, and conflicting descriptions indicating that the actual experience may not live up to the superlative descriptions found in historical texts or the expectations put forth by nondual teachers. A great deal more empirical research on this topic is needed, and researchers …

Prmt5-Mediated Regulation Of Developmental Myelination, Antonella Scaglione, Julia Patzig, Jialiang Liang, Rebecca Frawley, Jabez Bok, Angeliki Mela, Camila Yattah, Jingxian Zhang, Shun Xie Teo, Ting Zhou, Shuibing Chen, Emily Bernstein, Peter Canoll, Ernesto Guccione, Patricia Casaccia

Publications and Research

Oligodendrocytes (OLs) are the myelin-forming cells of the central nervous system. They are derived from differentiation of oligodendrocyte progenitors through a process requiring cell cycle exit and histone modifications. Here we identify the histone arginine methyl-transferase PRMT5, a molecule catalyzing symmetric methylation of histone H4R3, as critical for developmental myelination. PRMT5 pharmacological inhibition, CRISPR/cas9 targeting, or genetic ablation decrease p53-dependent survival and impair differentiation without affecting proliferation. Conditional ablation of Prmt5 in progenitors results in hypomyelination, reduced survival and differentiation. Decreased histone H4R3 symmetric methylation is followed by increased nuclear acetylation of H4K5, and is rescued by pharmacological inhibition of …

Immature Auditory Evoked Potentials In Children With Moderate-Severe Developmental Language Disorder., Elaine Yuen Ling Kwok, Marc F Joanisse, Lisa Archibald, Janis Oram Cardy

Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Publications

Purpose: Immature auditory processing has been proposed to underlie language impairments in children with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment). Using newly available normative auditory evoked potential (AEP) waveforms, we estimated AEP maturity in individual children with DLD and explored whether this maturational index was related to their language abilities.

Method: AEPs were elicited by 225 trials of a 490-Hz pure tone. Using intraclass correlation and our previously established normative AEP waveforms of 7- to 10-year-old children with typical development, we estimated the age equivalent of the AEPs (AEP-age) from 21 children with DLD. The relation …

Doxorubicin-Induced Elevated Oxidative Stress And Neurochemical Alterations In Brain And Cognitive Decline: Protection By Mesna And Insights Into Mechanisms Of Chemotherapy-Induced Cognitive Impairment ("Chemobrain"), Jeriel T. R. Keeney, Xiaojia Ren, Govind Warrier, Teresa Noel, David K. Powell, Jennifer M. Brelsfoard, Rukhsana Sultana, Kathryn E. Saatman, Daret K. St. Clair, D. Allan Butterfield

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI) is now widely recognized as a real and too common complication of cancer chemotherapy experienced by an ever-growing number of cancer survivors. Previously, we reported that doxorubicin (Dox), a prototypical reactive oxygen species (ROS)-producing anti-cancer drug, results in oxidation of plasma proteins, including apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) leading to tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α)-mediated oxidative stress in plasma and brain. We also reported that co-administration of the antioxidant drug, 2-mercaptoethane sulfonate sodium (MESNA), prevents Dox-induced protein oxidation and subsequent TNF-α elevation in plasma. In this study, we measured oxidative stress in both brain and plasma of Dox-treated mice …

Modeling Semantic Encoding In A Common Neural Representational Space, Cara E. Van Uden, Samuel A. Nastase, Andrew C. Connolly, Ma Feilong, Isabella Hansen, M Ida Gobbini, James V. Haxby

Dartmouth Scholarship

Encoding models for mapping voxelwise semantic tuning are typically estimated separately for each individual, limiting their generalizability. In the current report, we develop a method for estimating semantic encoding models that generalize across individuals. Functional MRI was used to measure brain responses while participants freely viewed a naturalistic audiovisual movie. Word embeddings capturing agent-, action-, object-, and scene-related semantic content were assigned to each imaging volume based on an annotation of the film. We constructed both conventional within-subject semantic encoding models and between-subject models where the model was trained on a subset of participants and validated on a left-out participant. …

Ca2+, Astrocyte Activation And Calcineurin/Nfat Signaling In Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases, Pradoldej Sompol, Christopher M. Norris

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Mounting evidence supports a fundamental role for Ca²⁺ dysregulation in astrocyte activation. Though the activated astrocyte phenotype is complex, cell-type targeting approaches have revealed a number of detrimental roles of activated astrocytes involving neuroinflammation, release of synaptotoxic factors and loss of glutamate regulation. Work from our lab and others has suggested that the Ca²⁺/calmodulin dependent protein phosphatase, calcineurin (CN), provides a critical link between Ca²⁺ dysregulation and the activated astrocyte phenotype. A proteolyzed, hyperactivated form of CN appears at high levels in activated astrocytes in both human tissue and rodent tissue around regions of amyloid and …

Regulation Of Epithelial Sodium Channels In Vasopressin Neurons In The Hypothalamus, Natalie Jean Mills

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Salt-sensitive individuals have blood pressure that is unusually sensitive to salt intake. Because salt-sensitivity is a common disorder and may cause high blood pressure, it is a significant public health concern. All three epithelial Na⁺ channel (ENaC) subunits (a, b, and g) and the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), a known regulator of ENaC, are expressed by vasopressin (VP) synthesizing magnocellular neurons in the hypothalamic supraoptic (SON) and paraventricular (PVN) nuclei. A growing body of evidence indicates that epithelial Na⁺ channels (ENaCs) in the hypothalamus play a significant role in the development of salt-sensitivity. My dissertation research tests the hypothesis …

Chemosensory Communication And Neural Substrates Of Social Behavior In The African Cichlid Fish, Astatotilapia Burtoni, Karen Elizabeth Field

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social animals must constantly assess their environment to make appropriate decisions. In several fish species, chemosensory signaling is crucial for social communication, conveying information on sex, reproductive state, and social status. Despite its importance in fishes, relatively little is known about how they employ chemical signaling, with only a few of the over 30,000 extant species investigated thus far. Further, there is a scarcity of information about where and how socially-relevant chemosensory signals are processed in the brain of fishes, or how chemosensory signals are integrated with other senses to elicit appropriate behaviors. For my doctoral research, I examined the …

Role Of Mcp-1 And Ccr2 In Ethanol-Induced Neuroinflammation And Neurodegeneration In The Developing Brain, Kai Zhang, Haiping Wang, Mei Xu, Jacqueline A. Frank, Jia Luo

Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Neuroinflammation and microglial activation have been implicated in both alcohol use disorders (AUD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). Chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) and its receptor C-C chemokine receptor type 2 (CCR2) are critical mediators of neuroinflammation and microglial activation. FASD is the leading cause of mental retardation, and one of the most devastating outcomes of FASD is the loss of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS). The underlying molecular mechanisms, however, remain unclear. We hypothesize that MCP-1/CCR2 signaling mediates ethanol-induced neuroinflammation and microglial activation, which exacerbates neurodegeneration in the developing brain.

Methods: C57BL/6 mice and …

Endocytosis And The Nitric Oxide-Dependent Release Of Chloride, Vernon K. Dunn Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding the regulation of retinal synapses is a key step in elucidating the processing of information in the retina. Our lab has previously shown that nitric oxide (NO) can alter the synaptic response properties of amacrine cells by releasing Cl- from internal acidic compartments. This alteration in the Cl- gradient brings about a positive shift in the reversal potential of the GABA-gated current, which can convert inhibitory synapses into excitatory synapses. Recently, we have shown that the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) Cl- channel is involved in the Cl- release. Here, we test the hypothesis that (acidic) synaptic vesicles are …

Preventing P-Gp Ubiquitination Lowers Aβ Brain Levels In An Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Model, Anika M. S. Hartz, Yu Zhong, Andrew N. Shen, Erin L. Abner, Björn Bauer

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

One characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is excessive accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) in the brain. Aβ brain accumulation is, in part, due to a reduction in Aβ clearance from the brain across the blood-brain barrier. One key element that contributes to Ab brain clearance is P-glycoprotein (P-gp) that transports Aβ from brain to blood. In AD, P-gp protein expression and transport activity levels are significantly reduced, which impairs Aβ brain clearance. The mechanism responsible for reduced P-gp expression and activity levels is poorly understood. We recently demonstrated that Aβ₄₀ triggers P-gp degradation through the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Consistent with these …

Inactivation Of The Medial-Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Interval Timing Precision, But Not Timing Accuracy Or Scalar Timing In A Peak-Interval Procedure In Rats, Catalin V. Buhusi, Marcelo B. Reyes, Cody-Aaron Gathers, Sorinel A. Oprisan, Mona Buhusi

Psychology Faculty Publications

Motor sequence learning, planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors, and decision making rely on accurate time estimation and production of durations in the seconds-to-minutes range. The pathways involved in planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors include cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry modulated by dopaminergic inputs. A critical feature of interval timing is its scalar property, by which the precision of timing is proportional to the timed duration. We examined the role of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in timing by evaluating the effect of its reversible inactivation on timing accuracy, timing precision and scalar timing. Rats were trained to time two durations in a …

Metabolic And Vascular Imaging Biomarkers In Down Syndrome Provide Unique Insights Into Brain Aging And Alzheimer Disease Pathogenesis, Elizabeth Head, David K. Powell, Frederick A. Schmitt

Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences Faculty Publications

People with Down syndrome (DS) are at high risk for developing Alzheimer disease (AD). Neuropathology consistent with AD is present by 40 years of age and dementia may develop up to a decade later. In this review, we describe metabolic and vascular neuroimaging studies in DS that suggest these functional changes are a key feature of aging, linked to cognitive decline and AD in this vulnerable cohort. FDG-PET imaging in DS suggests systematic reductions in glucose metabolism in posterior cingulate and parietotemporal cortex. Magentic resonance spectroscopy studies show consistent decreases in neuronal health and increased myoinositol, suggesting inflammation. There are …

Direct Current Stimulation Of Endothelial Monolayers Induces A Transient And Reversible Increase In Transport Due To The Electroosmotic Effect, Limary M. Cancel, Katherin Arias, Marom Bikson, John M. Tarbell

Publications and Research

We investigated the effects of direct current stimulation (DCS) on fluid and solute transport across endothelial cell (EC) monolayers in vitro. Our motivation was transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) that has been investigated for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders, to enhance neurorehabilitation, and to change cognition in healthy subjects. The mechanisms underlying this diversity of applications remain under investigation. To address the possible role of blood-brain barrier (BBB) changes during tDCS, we applied direct current to cultured EC monolayers in a specially designed chamber that generated spatially uniform direct current. DCS induced fluid and solute movement across EC layers that persisted …

Wearable Assistive Technologies For Autism: Opportunities And Challenges, Emma Mansouri Benssassi, Juan-Carlos Gomez, Louanne E. Boyd, Gillian R. Hayes, Juan Ye

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Autism is a lifelong developmental condition that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Challenges with typical social engagement, common in the autism experience, can have a significant negative impact on the quality of life of individuals and families living with autism. Recent advances in sensing, intelligent, and interactive technologies can enable new forms of assistive and augmentative technologies to support social interactions. However, researchers have not yet demonstrated effectiveness of these technologies in long-term real-world use. This article presents an overview of the social and sensory challenges of autism, which offer great opportunities and challenges for …

Mapping Molecular Datasets Back To The Brain Regions They Are Extracted From: Remembering The Native Countries Of Hypothalamic Expatriates And Refugees, Arshad Khan, Alice Grant, Anais Martinez, Gully Burns, Brendan Thatcher, Vishwanath Anekonda, Benjamin Thompson, Zachary Roberts, Daniel Moralejo, James Blevins

Selected Works Temporary Series

This article, which includes novel unpublished data along with commentary and analysis,focuses on approaches to link transcriptomic, proteomic, and peptidomic datasets mined frombrain tissue to the original locations within the brain that they are derived from using digital atlasmapping techniques. We use, as an example, the transcriptomic, proteomic and peptidomicanalyses conducted in the mammalian hypothalamus. Following a brief historical overview, wehighlight studies that have mined biochemical and molecular information from the hypothalamusand then lay out a strategy for how these data can be linked spatially to the mapped locations in acanonical brain atlas where the data come from, thereby allowing …

Mapping Molecular Datasets Back To The Brain Regions They Are Extracted From: Remembering The Native Countries Of Hypothalamic Expatriates And Refugees, Khan, Alice Grant, Anais Martinez, Gully Burns, Brendan Thatcher, Vishwanath Anekonda, Benjamin Thompson, Zachary Roberts, Daniel Moralejo, James Blevins

Departmental Papers (Biology)

This article, which includes novel unpublished data along with commentary and analysis,focuses on approaches to link transcriptomic, proteomic, and peptidomic datasets mined frombrain tissue to the original locations within the brain that they are derived from using digital atlasmapping techniques. We use, as an example, the transcriptomic, proteomic and peptidomicanalyses conducted in the mammalian hypothalamus. Following a brief historical overview, wehighlight studies that have mined biochemical and molecular information from the hypothalamusand then lay out a strategy for how these data can be linked spatially to the mapped locations in acanonical brain atlas where the data come from, thereby allowing …

Processing Emotional Expression In The Dance Of A Foreign Culture: Gestural Responses Of Germans And Koreans To Ballet And Korean Dance, Zi Hyun Kim, Hedda Lausberg

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Artistic dance differs between cultures with regard to the formal movement repertoire and methods to represent dancer's emotions. The present study explores how differently the spectators perceive the dance scenes of their own and foreign cultures. We showed German and Korean participants sad and happy dance scenes of the French ballet Giselle and Korean dance Sung-Mu. To learn the perceived thoughts and feelings of the participant from the dance scenes, we analyzed the frequency of their hand movements and gestures, which were accompanied by verbal descriptions of the participant's appreciation immediately after observation of the dance stimuli. The videotaped …

Carbonic Anhydrase Inhibition Selectively Prevents Amyloid B Neurovascular Mitochondrial Toxicity, María E. Solesio, Pablo M. Peixoto, Ludovic Debure, Stephen M. Madamba, Mony J. De Leon, Thomas Wisniewski, Evgeny V. Pavlov, Silvia Fossati

Publications and Research

Mounting evidence suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction plays a causal role in the etiology and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We recently showed that the carbonic anhydrase inhibitor (CAI) methazolamide (MTZ) prevents amyloid b (Ab)-mediated onset of apoptosis in the mouse brain. In this study, we used MTZ and, for the first time, the analog CAI acetazolamide (ATZ) in neuronal and cerebral vascular cells challenged with Ab, to clarify their protective effects and mitochondrial molecular mechanism of action. The CAIs selectively inhibited mitochondrial dysfunction pathways induced by Ab, without affecting metabolic function. ATZ was effective at concentrations 10 times lower than …

When Less Is More: Mindfulness Predicts Adaptive Affective Responding To Rejection Via Reduced Prefrontal Recruitment, Alexandra M. Martelli, David S. Chester, Kirk Warren Brown, Naomi I. Eisenberger, C. Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness—defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment—may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection—or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during …

Social Experience Affects Decision Making And Learning: Empirical And Computational Analysis, Sungwoo Ahn

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Battle Of The Sexes: Does Sex Matter In Cannabis Use?, Toneisha Stubbs

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

No abstract provided.

Transcriptional Correlates Of Proximal-Distal Identify And Regeneration Timing In Axolotl Limbs, S. Randal Voss, David Murrugarra, Tyler B. Jensen, James R Monaghan

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

Cells within salamander limbs retain memories that inform the correct replacement of amputated tissues at different positions along the length of the arm, with proximal and distal amputations completing regeneration at similar times. We investigated the possibility that positional memory is associated with variation in transcript abundances along the proximal-distal limb axis. Transcripts were deeply sampled from Ambystoma mexicanum limbs at the time they were administered fore arm vs upper arm amputations, and at 19 post-amputation time points. After amputation and prior to regenerative outgrowth, genes typically expressed by differentiated muscle cells declined more rapidly in upper arms while cell …

Socioeconomic Disparities In Academic Achievement: A Multi-Modal Investigation Of Neural Mechanisms In Children And Adolescents, Maya L. Rosen, Margaret A. Sheridan, Kelly A. Sambrook, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Katie A. Mclaughlin

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

Growing evidence suggests that childhood socioeconomic status (SES) influences neural development, which may contribute to the well-documented SES-related disparities in academic achievement. However, the particular aspects of SES that impact neural structure and function are not well understood. Here, we investigate associations of childhood SES and a potential mechanism—degree of cognitive stimulation in the home environment—with cortical structure, white matter microstructure, and neural function during a working memory (WM) task across development. Analyses included 53 youths (age 6–19 years). Higher SES as reflected in the income-to-needs ratio was associated with higher parent-reported achievement, WM performance, and cognitive stimulation in the …

“Musical Exercise” For People With Visual Impairments: A Preliminary Study With The Blindfolded, Ridwan Ahmed Khan, Myounghoon Jeon, Tejin Yoon

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Performing independent physical exercise is critical to maintain one's good health, but it is specifically hard for people with visual impairments. To address this problem, we have developed a Musical Exercise platform for people with visual impairments so that they can perform exercise in a good form consistently. We designed six different conditions, including blindfolded or visual without audio conditions, and blindfolded or visual with two different types of audio feedback (continuous vs. discrete) conditions. Eighteen sighted participants participated in the experiment, by doing two exercises - squat and wall sit with all six conditions. The results show that Musical …

Myelin As An Inflammatory Mediator: Myelin Interactions With Complement, Macrophages, And Microglia In Spinal Cord Injury, Timothy J. Kopper, John C. Gensel

Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center Faculty Publications

Spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers chronic intraspinal inflammation consisting of activated resident and infiltrating immune cells (especially microglia/macrophages). The environmental factors contributing to this protracted inflammation are not well understood; however, myelin lipid debris is a hallmark of SCI. Myelin is also a potent macrophage stimulus and target of complement‐mediated clearance and inflammation. The downstream effects of these neuroimmune interactions have the potential to contribute to ongoing pathology or facilitate repair. This depends in large part on whether myelin drives pathological or reparative macrophage activation states, commonly referred to as M1 (proinflammatory) or M2 (alternatively) macrophages, respectively. Here we review …

Defining The Radioresponse Of Mossy Cells, Devon Ivy

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Clinical radiotherapy is used to treat a variety of brain tumors within the central nervous system. While effective, it can result in progressive and debilitating cognitive impairment that can diminish quality of life. These impairments have been linked to hippocampal dysfunction and corresponding deficits in spatial learning and memory. Mossy cells are a major population of excitatory neurons located within the dentate hilus and highly involved in hippocampal circuitry. They play critical roles in spatial navigation, neurogenesis, memory, and are particularly vulnerable to a variety of neurotoxic insults. However, their sensitivity to ionizing radiation has yet to be investigated in …

Reflections On Contributing To “Big Discoveries” About The Fly Clock: Our Fortunate Paths As Post-Docs With 2017 Nobel Laureates Jeff Hall, Michael Rosbash, And Mike Young, Kathleen King Siwicki, P. E. Hardin, J. L. Price

Biology Faculty Works

In the early 1980s Jeff Hall and Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University and Mike Young at Rockefeller University set out to isolate the period (per) gene, which was recovered in a revolutionary genetic screen by Ron Konopka and Seymour Benzer for mutants that altered circadian behavioral rhythms. Over the next 15 years the Hall, Rosbash and Young labs made a series of groundbreaking discoveries that defined the molecular timekeeping mechanism and formed the basis for them being awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Here the authors recount their experiences as post-docs in the Hall, Rosbash and Young …