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Mashup Score: 2Norepinephrine Neurons in the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract Suppress Luteinizing Hormone Secretion in Female Mice. - 4 month(s) ago
Stress impairs fertility, at least in part, via inhibition of gonadotropin secretion. Luteinizing hormone (LH) is an important gonadotropin that is released in a pulsatile pattern in males and in females throughout the majority of the ovarian cycle. Several models of stress, including acute metabolic stress, suppress LH pulses via inhibition of neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus that co-express kisspeptin, neurokinin B, and dynorphin (termed KNDy cells) which form the pulse generator. The mechanism for inhibition of KNDy neurons during stress, however, remains a significant outstanding question. Here, we investigated a population of catecholamine neurons in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), marked by expression of the enzyme dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH), in female mice. First, we found that a subpopulation of DBH neurons in the NTS are activated (express c-Fos) during metabolic stress. Then, using chemogenetics we determined that activation of these cells is s
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet
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Mashup Score: 3
Foraging decisions involve assessing potential risks and prioritizing food sources, which can be challenging when confronted with changing and conflicting circumstances. A crucial aspect of this decision-making process is the ability to actively overcome defensive reactions to threats and focus on achieving specific goals. The ventral pallidum (VP) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) are two brain regions that play key roles in regulating behavior motivated by either rewards or threats. However, it is unclear whether these regions are necessary in decision-making processes involving competing motivational drives during conflict. Our aim was to investigate the requirements of the VP and BLA for foraging choices in conflicts involving overcoming defensive responses. Here, we used a novel foraging task and pharmacological techniques to inactivate either the VP or BLA or to disconnect these brain regions before conducting a conflict test in male rats. Our findings showed that BLA is necessary f
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
#JNeurosci: Findings from Hernández-Jaramillo et al. reveal the critical role of the pallidal-amygdalar connection in controlling cautious approach behaviors influenced by past experiences in rats. @So3Lab @UNAM_MX https://t.co/sU66RFazSZ https://t.co/jaASFRnbiG
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Mashup Score: 2Neural Correlates of Crowding in Macaque Area V4 - 4 month(s) ago
Visual crowding refers to the phenomenon where a target object that is easily identifiable in isolation becomes difficult to recognize when surrounded by other stimuli (distractors). Many psychophysical studies have investigated this phenomenon and proposed alternative models for the underlying mechanisms. One prominent hypothesis, albeit with mixed psychophysical support, posits that crowding arises from the loss of information due to pooled encoding of features from target and distractor stimuli in the early stages of cortical visual processing. However, neurophysiological studies have not rigorously tested this hypothesis. We studied the responses of single neurons in macaque (one male, one female) area V4, an intermediate stage of the object-processing pathway, to parametrically designed crowded displays and texture statistics-matched metameric counterparts. Our investigations reveal striking parallels between how crowding parameters—number, distance, and position of distractors—in
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
#JNeurosci: @TaekjunK and Pasupathy identify a neural basis for a fundamental perceptual phenomenon and begin to reveal how scenes with multiple objects are recognized by the primate brain. @BioStructureUW @UWMedicine https://t.co/BHBgv77zaq https://t.co/SV7liXmzzY
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Mashup Score: 0This Week in The Journal - 4 month(s) ago
Toward Understanding the ACC’s Complex Relationship with Pain and Analgesia Samuel Kissinger, Estefania O’Neil, Baolin Li, Kirk Johnson, Jeffrey Krajewski, and Akihiko Kato (see article e2231232024) Preclinical biomarkers for pain are lacking. The advent of large-scale neurophysiological recording techniques in animal models has cultivated a new strategy with which to unveil the dynamic and multidimensional neuronal activity signatures underlying pain states. Because of the anterior cingulate cortex’s (ACC) known role in the negative emotions associated with pain, Kissinger and colleagues directly explored its activity prior to inflammatory pain, during pain, and under analgesia in a mouse model to better understand its use as a neural representation of …
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
This Week in The Journal #JNeurosci | Toward Understanding the ACC's Complex Relationship with Pain and Analgesia; Distinct Visual Cues Differentially Impact Components of Actions https://t.co/CTEY1H828G
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Mashup Score: 9
Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality (N/NE)—the tendency to experience anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions—is a fundamental dimension of temperament with profound consequences for health, wealth, and wellbeing. Elevated N/NE is associated with a panoply of adverse outcomes, from reduced socioeconomic attainment to psychiatric illness. Animal research suggests that N/NE reflects heightened reactivity to uncertain threat in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce), but the relevance of these discoveries to humans has remained unclear. Here we used a novel combination of psychometric, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging approaches to rigorously test this hypothesis in an ethnoracially diverse, sex-balanced sample of 220 emerging adults selectively recruited to encompass a broad spectrum of N/NE. Cross-validated robust-regression analyses demonstrated that N/NE is preferentially associated with heightened BST activation during the uncerta
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
New in #JNeurosci: Grogans, @ajshackman et al. find that the BST is hyperreactive to uncertainty of threatening encounters in people with neuroticism, which is a major risk factor for emotional illness. @UofMaryland https://t.co/wcrxV0OfJu https://t.co/UMoRvHDERe
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Mashup Score: 2This Week in The Journal - 5 month(s) ago
A New Mechanism for Obesity and Reduced Sperm Count Comorbidity in Males Pedro Villa, Rebecca Ruggiero-Ruff, Bradley Jamieson, Rebecca Campbell, and Djurdjica Coss (see article e0222242024) Obesity has many life-altering comorbidities. Herein, Villa et al. investigated the mechanisms through which impaired reproduction in males arises with obesity. Informed by prior studies positing hypothalamic circuitry as the connecting link, the authors investigated mechanisms of hypothalamic impairment in obese, high-fat diet male mice. They first found that, like humans, mice had lower luteinizing hormone (LH) levels and lower frequency of LH secretion, which would lower testosterone levels and theoretically reduce sperm count. Because gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons control LH levels and …
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
This Week in The Journal #JNeurosci | A New Mechanism for Obesity and Reduced Sperm Count Comorbidity in Males; Trying Harder May Strengthen Memory https://t.co/lfrJOHW5qk
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Mashup Score: 8GRM2 Regulates Functional Integration of Adult-Born DGCs by Paradoxically Modulating MEK/ERK1/2 Pathway - 5 month(s) ago
Metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (GRM2) is highly expressed in hippocampal dentate granule cells (DGCs), regulating synaptic transmission and hippocampal functions. Newborn DGCs are continuously generated throughout life and express GRM2 when they are mature. However, it remained unclear whether and how GRM2 regulates the development and integration of these newborn neurons. We discovered that the expression of GRM2 in adult-born DGCs increased with neuronal development in mice of both sexes. Lack of GRM2 caused developmental defects of DGCs and impaired hippocampus-dependent cognitive functions. Intriguingly, our data showed that knockdown of Grm2 resulted in decreased b/c-Raf kinases and paradoxically led to an excessive activation of MEK/ERK1/2 pathway. Inhibition of MEK ameliorated the developmental defects caused by Grm2 knockdown. Together, our results indicate that GRM2 is necessary for the development and functional integration of newborn DGCs in the adult hippocampus through
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
#JNeurosci: Ma et al. @ZJU_China discovered that gradually increasing expression of Metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 is necessary for the proper development and functional integration of adult-born hippocampal dentate granule cells in mice. https://t.co/xbU95u5C7r https://t.co/TzcCs6coOM
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Mashup Score: 5This Week in The Journal - 5 month(s) ago
Presymptomatic Developmental Changes in a Xenopus ALS/FTD Model Francesca van Tartwijk, Lucia Wunderlich, Ioanna Mela, Stanislaw Makarchuk, Maximilian Jakobs et al. (see article e2148232024) Variants of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) exhibit issues in condensation and localization of the RNA-binding protein (RBP) fused in sarcoma (FUS). In this issue, van Tartwijk et al. investigated whether RBP-associated alterations in axonal cytoskeletal organization and branching occur in an in vivo Xenopus (a type of aquatic frog) model of FUS-associated …
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
This Week in The Journal #JNeurosci | Presymptomatic Developmental Changes in a Xenopus ALS/FTD Model; New Insights into How Deep Brain Stimulation Works https://t.co/B9PknKaOC2
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Mashup Score: 2Embodied Neural Systems Can Enable Iterative Investigations of Morally Relevant States - 5 month(s) ago
The development of new technologies is best accompanied by—ideally, preceded by—serious ethical reflection. Difficulties in achieving this goal can arise because only after integrating interdisciplinary expertise is it possible to fully capture the breadth of issues regarding how any new
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
#JNeurosci: To facilitate ethical research @ANeuroExplorer et al. @CorticalLabs propose exploring & developing metrics that may be linked to morally relevant states across multiple levels of complexity as a way to identify where these states do/don't arise https://t.co/O1kEMzYOG3 https://t.co/oPn5A3gwdS
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Mashup Score: 32Diurnal Fluctuations in Steroid Hormones Tied to Variation in Intrinsic Functional Connectivity in a Densely Sampled Male - 5 month(s) ago
Most of mammalian physiology is under the control of biological rhythms, including the endocrine system with time-varying hormone secretion. Precision neuroimaging studies provide unique insights into how the endocrine system dynamically regulates aspects of the human brain. Recently, we established estrogen’s ability to drive widespread patterns of connectivity and enhance the global efficiency of large-scale brain networks in a woman sampled every 24 h across 30 consecutive days, capturing a complete menstrual cycle. Steroid hormone production also follows a pronounced sinusoidal pattern, with a peak in testosterone between 6 and 7 A.M. and nadir between 7 and 8 P.M. To capture the brain’s response to diurnal changes in hormone production, we carried out a companion precision imaging study of a healthy adult man who completed MRI and venipuncture every 12–24 h across 30 consecutive days. Results confirmed robust diurnal fluctuations in testosterone, 17β-estradiol—the primary form of
Source: www.jneurosci.orgCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
#JNeurosci: @hannahgrotz @emilyjacobs et al. suggest endogenous fluctuations in testosterone, estradiol, & cortisol are tied to rhythmic changes in coherence across a densely-sampled male brain. Results are similar in both sexes but heightened in the male. https://t.co/YmgA5fXSFJ https://t.co/H555Xdkps0
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New in #JNeurosci: McCosh, @BreenChurch et al. use mice to reveal the role of the nucleus of the solitary tract in hypothalamic LH secretion, which is part of how stress impairs female fertility. @UCSanDiego https://t.co/O7YILClavJ https://t.co/lzMkfW00Bk