Activity in Occipito-Temporal Cortex Is Involved in Tool-Use Planning and Contributes to Tool-Related Semantic Neural Representations.

Tool use and language are highly refined human abilities which may show neural commonalities due to their potential reciprocal interaction during evolution. Recent work provided evidence for shared neural resources between tool use and syntax. However, whether activity within the tool-use network also contributes to semantic neural representations of tool nouns remains untested.

Learning-related contraction of gray matter in rodent sensorimotor cortex is associated with adaptive myelination.

From observations in rodents, it has been suggested that the cellular basis of learning-dependent changes, detected using structural MRI, may be increased dendritic spine density, alterations in astrocyte volume, and adaptations within intracortical myelin. Myelin plasticity is crucial for neurological function, and active myelination is required for learning and memory. However, the dynamics of myelin plasticity and how it relates to morphometric-based measurements of structural plasticity remains unknown.

Tool use and language share syntactic processes and neural patterns in the basal ganglia.

Does tool use share syntactic processes with language? Acting with a tool is thought to add a hierarchical level into the motor plan. In the linguistic domain, syntax is the cognitive function handling interdependent elements. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we detected common neurofunctional substrates in the basal ganglia subserving both tool use and syntax in language.

Associative learning in peripersonal space: fear responses are acquired in hand-centered coordinates.

Space coding affects perception of stimuli associated to negative valence: threatening stimuli presented within the peripersonal space (PPS) speed up behavioral responses compared with nonthreatening events. However, it remains unclear whether the association between stimuli and their negative valence is acquired in a body part-centered reference system, a main feature of the PPS coding. Here we test the hypothesis that associative learning takes place in hand-centered coordinates and can therefore remap according to hand displacement.