Sex-specific contrasting role of BECLIN-1 protein in pain hypersensitivity and anxiety-like behaviors.

Chronic pain is a debilitative disease affecting 1 in 5 adults globally, and is a major risk factor for anxiety (Goldberg and McGee, 2011; Lurie, DI., 2018). Given the current dearth of available treatments for both individuals living with chronic pain and mental illnesses, there is a critical need for research into the molecular mechanisms involved in order to discover novel treatment targets.

Astrocyte neuronal metabolic coupling in the anterior cingulate cortex of mice with inflammatory pain.

Chronic pain is a major global concern, with at least 1 in 5 people suffering from chronic pain worldwide. Mounting evidence indicates that neuroplasticity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a critical step in the development of chronic pain. Previously, we found that chronic pain and fear learning are both associated with enhanced neuronal excitability and cause similar neuroplasticity-related gene expression changes in the ACC of male mice.

Theta oscillations linked to auditory informativeness and context disambiguation.

Accurate predictions and the processing of prediction error signals can be important for efficient interaction with the auditory environment. In a reanalysis of data from Simal et al . (2021), who found that informative tones elicited increased N1 and P2 event-related potential components, we sought to identify electrophysiological indicators in the time-frequency domain associated with disambiguation of the hearing context and prediction of forthcoming stimulation.

On target selection as reflected by posterior ERP components in feature-guided visual search.

The N2pc event-related potential is a widely studied ERP component that reflects the covert deployment of visuo-spatial attention to target stimuli displayed laterally relative to fixation. Recently, an analogous ERP component, named N2pcb, has been proposed as a marker of the deployment of visuo-spatial attention to targets displayed on the vertical midline. Two studies that investigated the N2pcb component found analogous results, using however two different algorithms to compute the amplitude of N2pcb.

A bilateral SPCN is elicited by to-be-memorized visual stimuli displayed along the vertical midline.

We recently showed that deploying attention to target stimuli displayed along the vertical meridian elicits a bilateral N2pc, that we labeled N2pcb (Psychophysiology). Here we investigated whether a different component, the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN), shows the same property when a varying number of visual stimuli are displayed either laterally or on the vertical meridian. We displayed one or two cues that designated candidate targets to be detected in a search array that was displayed after a retention interval.