Publications by authors named "J T Willie"

Object recognition is fundamental to how we interact with and interpret the world around us. The human amygdala and hippocampus play a key role in object recognition, contributing to both the encoding and retrieval of visual information. Here, we recorded single-neuron activity from the human amygdala and hippocampus when neurosurgical epilepsy patients performed a one-back task using naturalistic object stimuli.

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Debilitating anxiety is pervasive in the modern world. Choices to approach or avoid are common in everyday life and excessive avoidance is a cardinal feature of all anxiety disorders. Here, we used intracranial EEG to define a distributed prefrontal-limbic circuit dynamics supporting approach and avoidance.

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Strontium isotope (Sr/Sr) analysis with reference to strontium isotope landscapes (Sr isoscapes) allows reconstructing mobility and migration in archaeology, ecology, and forensics. However, despite the vast potential of research involving Sr/Sr analysis particularly in Africa, Sr isoscapes remain unavailable for the largest parts of the continent. Here, we measure the Sr/Sr ratios in 778 environmental samples from 24 African countries and combine this data with published data to model a bioavailable Sr isoscape for sub-Saharan Africa using random forest regression.

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Objective: Stereotactic laser amygdalohippocampotomy (SLAH) is a minimally invasive procedure for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy that preserves more tissue than open procedures. As a result, although patients have better functional outcomes, more patients do not achieve seizure freedom. The rate at which this occurs is evolving with improved surgical practices.

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Amygdala activation by emotional arousal during memory formation can prioritize events for long-term memory. Building upon our prior demonstration that brief electrical stimulation to the human amygdala reliably improved long-term recognition memory for images of neutral objects without eliciting an emotional response, our study aims to explore and describe individual differences and stimulation-related factors in amygdala-mediated memory modulation. Thirty-one patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for intractable epilepsy were shown neutral object images paired with direct amygdala stimulation during encoding with recognition memory tested immediately and one day later.

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