Brain fingerprint and subjective mood state across the menstrual cycle.

Background: Brain connectome fingerprinting represents a recent and valid approach in assessing individual identifiability on the basis of the subject-specific brain functional connectome. Although this methodology has been tested and validated in several neurological diseases, its performance, reliability and reproducibility in healthy individuals has been poorly investigated. In particular, the impact of the changes in brain connectivity, induced by the different phases of the menstrual cycle (MC), on the reliability of this approach remains unexplored.

A realistic computational model for the formation of a Place Cell.

Hippocampal Place Cells (PCs) are pyramidal neurons showing spatially localized firing when an animal gets into a specific area within an environment. Because of their obvious and clear relation with specific cognitive functions, Place Cells operations and modulations are intensely studied experimentally. However, although a lot of data have been gathered since their discovery, the cellular processes that interplay to turn a hippocampal pyramidal neuron into a Place Cell are still not completely understood.