Predicting Future Development of Stress-Induced Anhedonia From Cortical Dynamics and Facial Expression.

The current state of mental health treatment for individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder leaves billions of individuals with first-line therapies that are ineffective or burdened with undesirable side effects. One major obstacle is that distinct pathologies may currently be diagnosed as the same disease and prescribed the same treatments. The key to developing antidepressants with ubiquitous efficacy is to first identify a strategy to differentiate between heterogeneous conditions.

Social isolation recruits amygdala-cortical circuitry to escalate alcohol drinking.

How do social factors impact the brain and contribute to increased alcohol drinking? We found that social rank predicts alcohol drinking, where subordinates drink more than dominants. Furthermore, social isolation escalates alcohol drinking, particularly impacting subordinates who display a greater increase in alcohol drinking compared to dominants. Using cellular resolution calcium imaging, we show that the basolateral amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex (BLA-mPFC) circuit predicts alcohol drinking in a rank-dependent manner, unlike non-specific BLA activity.

The neural circuitry of social homeostasis: Consequences of acute versus chronic social isolation.

Social homeostasis is the ability of individuals to detect the quantity and quality of social contact, compare it to an established set-point in a command center, and adjust the effort expended to seek the optimal social contact expressed via an effector system. Social contact becomes a positive or negative valence stimulus when it is deficient or in excess, respectively. Chronic deficits lead to set-point adaptations such that reintroduction to the previous optimum is experienced as a surplus.

Breakdown of spatial coding and interneuron synchronization in epileptic mice.

Temporal lobe epilepsy causes severe cognitive deficits, but the circuit mechanisms remain unknown. Interneuron death and reorganization during epileptogenesis may disrupt the synchrony of hippocampal inhibition. To test this, we simultaneously recorded from the CA1 and dentate gyrus in pilocarpine-treated epileptic mice with silicon probes during head-fixed virtual navigation.