Falcon gut microbiota is shaped by diet and enriched in Salmonella.

The gut microbiome is increasingly being appreciated as a master regulator of animal health. However, avian gut microbiome studies commonly focus on birds of economic importance and the gut microbiomes of raptors remain underexplored. Here we examine the gut microbiota of 29 captive falcons-raptors of historic importance-in the context of avian evolution by sequencing the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene.

The role of the pre-commissural fornix in episodic autobiographical memory and simulation.

Neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence suggests that the ability to vividly remember our personal past, and imagine future scenarios, involves two closely connected regions: the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Despite evidence of a direct anatomical connection from hippocampus to vmPFC, it is unknown whether hippocampal-vmPFC structural connectivity supports both past- and future-oriented episodic thinking. To address this, we applied a novel deterministic tractography protocol to diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data from a group of healthy young adult humans who undertook an adapted past-future autobiographical interview (portions of this data were published in Hodgetts et al.

Temporal and spatial localization of prediction-error signals in the visual brain.

It has been suggested that the brain pre-empts changes in the environment through generating predictions, although real-time electrophysiological evidence of prediction violations in the domain of visual perception remain elusive. In a series of experiments we showed participants sequences of images that followed a predictable implied sequence or whose final image violated the implied sequence. Through careful design we were able to use the same final image transitions across predictable and unpredictable conditions, ensuring that any differences in neural responses were due only to preceding context and not to the images themselves.