Sex differences in change-of-mind neuroeconomic decision-making is modulated by LINC00473 in medial prefrontal cortex.

Changing one's mind is a complex cognitive phenomenon involving a continuous re-appraisal of the trade-off between past costs and future value. Recent work modeling this behavior across species has established associations between aspects of this choice process and their contributions to altered decision-making in psychopathology. Here, we investigated the actions in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons of long intergenic non-coding RNA, LINC00473, known to induce stress resilience in a striking sex-dependent manner, but whose role in cognitive function is unknown.

Simultaneous dual-color calcium imaging in freely-behaving mice.

Unlabelled: Miniaturized fluorescence microscopes (miniscopes) enable imaging of calcium events from a large population of neurons in freely behaving animals. Traditionally, miniscopes have only been able to record from a single fluorescence wavelength. Here, we present a new open-source dual-channel Miniscope that simultaneously records two wavelengths in freely behaving animals.

Ketamine reverses stress-induced hypersensitivity to sunk costs.

How mood interacts with information processing in the brain is thought to mediate the maladaptive behaviors observed in depressed individuals. However, the neural mechanisms underlying impairments in emotion-cognition interactions are poorly understood. This includes influencing the balance between how past-sensitive vs.

Diabetes alters neuroeconomically dissociable forms of mental accounting.

Those with diabetes mellitus are at high-risk of developing psychiatric disorders, yet the link between hyperglycemia and alterations in motivated behavior has not been explored in detail. We characterized value-based decision-making behavior of a streptozocin-induced diabetic mouse model on a naturalistic neuroeconomic foraging paradigm called Restaurant Row. Mice made self-paced choices while on a limited time-budget accepting or rejecting reward offers as a function of cost (delays cued by tone-pitch) and subjective value (flavors), tested daily in a closed-economy system across months.

A Double Hit of Social and Economic Stress in Mice Precipitates Changes in Decision-Making Strategies.

Background: Economic stress can serve as a second hit for people who have already accumulated a history of adverse life experiences. How one recovers from a setback is a core feature of resilience but is seldom captured in animal studies.

Methods: We challenged mice in a novel 2-hit stress model by first exposing them to chronic social defeat stress and then testing adaptations to increasing reward scarcity on a neuroeconomic task.

Postoperative mometasone irrigations improve quality of life in skull base tumor patients.

Objectives: The use of topical corticosteroids to manage postoperative sinonasal symptoms after endoscopic skull base surgery (ESBS) has not been well studied. We quantified long-term impact of postoperative steroid irrigations (SIs) on quality of life of patients after ESBS.

Methods: Retrospective review of patients at the University of Pennsylvania undergoing ESBS from 2010 to 2019.

A quadruple dissociation of reward-related behaviour in mice across excitatory inputs to the nucleus accumbens shell.

The nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh) is critically important for reward valuations, yet it remains unclear how valuation information is integrated in this region to drive behaviour during reinforcement learning. Using an optogenetic spatial self-stimulation task in mice, here we show that contingent activation of different excitatory inputs to the NAcSh change expression of different reward-related behaviours. Our data indicate that medial prefrontal inputs support place preference via repeated actions, ventral hippocampal inputs consistently promote place preferences, basolateral amygdala inputs produce modest place preferences but as a byproduct of increased sensitivity to time investments, and paraventricular inputs reduce place preferences yet do not produce full avoidance behaviour.

Pushing the boundaries of behavioral analysis could aid psychiatric drug discovery.

Drug discovery for psychiatric conditions is stagnating. Behavioral changes could be used as a primary phenotypic screen for new drug candidates, if enough useful data can be generated from behavioral models. Could machine learning be the answer to extracting the data we need?

Sunk cost sensitivity during change-of-mind decisions is informed by both the spent and remaining costs.

Sunk cost sensitivity describes escalating decision commitment with increased spent resources. On neuroeconomic foraging tasks, mice, rats, and humans show similar escalations from sunk costs while quitting an ongoing countdown to reward. In a new analysis taken across computationally parallel foraging tasks across species and laboratories, we find that these behaviors primarily occur on choices that are economically inconsistent with the subject's other choices, and that they reflect not only the time spent, but also the time remaining, suggesting that these are change-of-mind re-evaluation processes.

Distinct forms of regret linked to resilience versus susceptibility to stress are regulated by region-specific CREB function in mice.

Regret describes recognizing alternative actions could have led to better outcomes. It remains unclear whether regret derives from generalized mistake appraisal or instead comprises dissociable, action-specific processes. Using a neuroeconomic task, we found that mice were sensitive to fundamentally distinct types of regret following exposure to chronic social defeat stress or manipulations of CREB, a transcription factor implicated in stress action.

Dynamic and heterogeneous neural ensembles contribute to a memory engram.

In the century since the notion of the 'engram' was first introduced to describe the physical manifestation of memory, new technologies for identifying cellular activity have enabled us to deepen our understanding of the possible physical substrate of memory. A number of studies have shown that memories are stored in a sparse population of neurons known as a neural ensemble or engram cells. While earlier investigations highlighted that the stability of neural ensembles underlies a memory representation, recent studies have found that neural ensembles are more dynamic and fluid than previously understood.

The impact of endoscopic sinus surgery and aspirin desensitization on psychological burden in aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease.

Background: Aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD) is an aggressive inflammatory disorder of the upper and lower respiratory tract. Corticosteroids, leukotriene modifiers, endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS), aspirin (ASA) desensitization, and biological immunomodulators are currently used to treat the disorder.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the psychosocial impact of ESS and ASA desensitization on AERD patients.

Differences in management outcome for first branchial cleft anomalies: A comparison of infants and toddlers to older children.

Objective: First branchial cleft anomalies (FBCAs) are rare and often misdiagnosed, which can delay proper management and increase surgical risks. Complete excision often requires parotidectomy with facial nerve dissection. The literature reports that younger patients more often have lesions deep to the nerve with higher rates of nerve injury.

Beyond simple tests of value: measuring addiction as a heterogeneous disease of computation-specific valuation processes.

Addiction is considered to be a neurobiological disorder of learning and memory because addiction is capable of producing lasting changes in the brain. Recovering addicts chronically struggle with making poor decisions that ultimately lead to relapse, suggesting a view of addiction also as a neurobiological disorder of decision-making information processing. How the brain makes decisions depends on how decision-making processes access information stored as memories in the brain.

Sensitivity to "sunk costs" in mice, rats, and humans.

Sunk costs are irrecoverable investments that should not influence decisions, because decisions should be made on the basis of expected future consequences. Both human and nonhuman animals can show sensitivity to sunk costs, but reports from across species are inconsistent. In a temporal context, a sensitivity to sunk costs arises when an individual resists ending an activity, even if it seems unproductive, because of the time already invested.

Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict.

Neuroeconomic theories propose changes in decision making drive relapse in recovering drug addicts, resulting in continued drug use despite stated wishes not to. Such conflict is thought to arise from multiple valuation systems dependent on separable neural components, yet many neurobiology of addiction studies employ only simple tests of value. Here, we tested in mice how prolonged abstinence from different drugs affects behavior in a neuroeconomic foraging task that reveals multiple tests of value.

Mice learn to avoid regret.

Regret can be defined as the subjective experience of recognizing that one has made a mistake and that a better alternative could have been selected. The experience of regret is thought to carry negative utility. This typically takes two distinct forms: augmenting immediate postregret valuations to make up for losses, and augmenting long-term changes in decision-making strategies to avoid future instances of regret altogether.

Altering gain of the infralimbic-to-accumbens shell circuit alters economically dissociable decision-making algorithms.

The nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh) is involved in reward valuation. Excitatory projections from infralimbic cortex (IL) to NAcSh undergo synaptic remodeling in rodent models of addiction and enable the extinction of disadvantageous behaviors. However, how the strength of synaptic transmission of the IL-NAcSh circuit affects decision-making information processing and reward valuation remains unknown, particularly because these processes can conflict within a given trial and particularly given recent data suggesting that decisions arise from separable information-processing algorithms.

Neonatal hyperglycemia induces CXCL10/CXCR3 signaling and microglial activation and impairs long-term synaptogenesis in the hippocampus and alters behavior in rats.

Background: Hyperglycemia is common in extremely low gestational age newborns (ELGAN) and is associated with increased mortality and morbidity, including abnormal neurodevelopment. Hippocampus-mediated cognitive deficits are common in this population, but the specific effects of hyperglycemia on the developing hippocampus are not known.

Methods: The objective of this study was to determine the acute and long-term effects of hyperglycemia on the developing hippocampus in neonatal rats using a streptozotocin (STZ)-induced model of hyperglycemia.

Comparisons between Garcia, Modo, and Longa rodent stroke scales: Optimizing resource allocation in rat models of focal middle cerebral artery occlusion.

The use of rodent stroke models allow for the understanding of stroke pathophysiology. There is currently no gold standard neurological assessment to measure deficits and recovery from stroke in rodent models. Agreement on a universal preclinical stroke scale allows for comparison of the outcomes among conducted studies.

A modified beam-walking apparatus for assessment of anxiety in a rodent model of blast traumatic brain injury.

The elevated plus maze (EPM) is used to assess anxiety in rodents. Beam-walking tasks are used to assess vestibulomotor function. Brain injury in rodents can disrupt performance on both of these tasks.