Oculomotor control after hemidecortication: One hemisphere encodes normal ipsilateral oblique anti-saccades.

A critical question in neurology is how the brain reorganizes its structure and function following injury. Here, we consider oculomotor control following a massive brain lesion, a hemispherectomy. We used the oblique anti-saccade task which requires the suppression of a saccade towards a visual cue, flashed anywhere in a patient's seeing hemifield, and the generation, in the dark, of an anti-saccade to a task-dependent location in the opposite blind hemifield; inverting either the horizontal or both horizontal and vertical components.

Siberian genetic diversity reveals complex origins of the Samoyedic-speaking populations.

Objectives: We examined autosomal genome-wide SNPs and Y-chromosome data from 15 Siberian and 12 reference populations to study the affinities of Siberian populations, and to address hypotheses about the origin of the Samoyed peoples.

Methods: Samples were genotyped for 567 096 autosomal SNPs and 147 Y-chromosome polymorphic sites. For several analyses, we used 281 093 SNPs from the intersection of our data with publicly available ancient Siberian samples.

The primitive retino-tecto-reticular pathway is functional in hemidecorticate patients.

Normal vision requires the classic neural pathway from retina to lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) to cortex. A lesion of visual cortex causes blindness, but often unconscious visual abilities are retained; this is known as 'blindsight' and is characterised by responses to visual stimuli a patient denies seeing. Three types of blindsight have been proposed: action blindsight, attention blindsight and agnosopsia [1].

Complex Patterns of Admixture across the Indonesian Archipelago.

Indonesia, an island nation as large as continental Europe, hosts a sizeable proportion of global human diversity, yet remains surprisingly undercharacterized genetically. Here, we substantially expand on existing studies by reporting genome-scale data for nearly 500 individuals from 25 populations in Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Oceania, notably including previously unsampled islands across the Indonesian archipelago. We use high-resolution analyses of haplotype diversity to reveal fine detail of regional admixture patterns, with a particular focus on the Holocene.

Small Traditional Human Communities Sustain Genomic Diversity over Microgeographic Scales despite Linguistic Isolation.

At least since the Neolithic, humans have largely lived in networks of small, traditional communities. Often socially isolated, these groups evolved distinct languages and cultures over microgeographic scales of just tens of kilometers. Population genetic theory tells us that genetic drift should act quickly in such isolated groups, thus raising the question: do networks of small human communities maintain levels of genetic diversity over microgeographic scales? This question can no longer be asked in most parts of the world, which have been heavily impacted by historical events that make traditional society structures the exception.