Neocortical pyramidal neurons with axons emerging from dendrites are frequent in non-primates, but rare in monkey and human.

The canonical view of neuronal function is that inputs are received by dendrites and somata, become integrated in the somatodendritic compartment and upon reaching a sufficient threshold, generate axonal output with axons emerging from the cell body. The latter is not necessarily the case. Instead, axons may originate from dendrites.

Is It Worth It? Obesity Affects Snack Food Valuation Across the Menstrual Cycle.

Background: The importance of menstrual cycle physiology in appetite and obesity is poorly understood. We investigated the effects of body mass index (BMI), menstrual cycle phase and sweet and salty taste on monetary valuation of snack foods.

Methods: We recruited 72 women and after the application of in- and exclusion criteria 31 participants with healthy weight and 25 with obesity remained.

Opioid antagonism modulates wanting-related frontostriatal connectivity.

Theoretical accounts distinguish between motivational ('wanting') and hedonic ('liking') dimensions of rewards. Previous animal and human research linked wanting and liking to anatomically and neurochemically distinct brain mechanisms, but it remains unknown how the different brain regions and neurotransmitter systems interact in processing distinct reward dimensions. Here, we assessed how pharmacological manipulations of opioid and dopamine receptor activation modulate the neural processing of wanting and liking in humans in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial.

Aesthetics and morality judgments share cortical neuroarchitecture.

Philosophers have predominantly regarded morality and aesthetics judgments as fundamentally different. However, whether this claim is empirically founded has remained unclear. In a novel task, we measured brain activity of participants judging the aesthetic beauty of artwork or the moral goodness of actions depicted.

Frontostriatal pathways gate processing of behaviorally relevant reward dimensions.

The value of rewards arises from multiple hedonic and motivational dimensions. Reward-encoding brain regions such as the ventral striatum (VS) are known to process these dimensions. However, the mechanism whereby distinct reward dimensions are selected for neural processing and guiding behavior remains unclear.

Dopamine Receptor-Specific Contributions to the Computation of Value.

Dopamine is thought to play a crucial role in value-based decision making. However, the specific contributions of different dopamine receptor subtypes to the computation of subjective value remain unknown. Here we demonstrate how the balance between D1 and D2 dopamine receptor subtypes shapes subjective value computation during risky decision making.

The dopaminergic reward system underpins gender differences in social preferences.

Women are known to have stronger prosocial preferences than men, but it remains an open question as to how these behavioural differences arise from differences in brain functioning. Here, we provide a neurobiological account for the hypothesized gender difference. In a pharmacological study and an independent neuroimaging study, we tested the hypothesis that the neural reward system encodes the value of sharing money with others more strongly in women than in men.

Dopamine D2-receptor blockade enhances decoding of prefrontal signals in humans.

The prefrontal cortex houses representations critical for ongoing and future behavior expressed in the form of patterns of neural activity. Dopamine has long been suggested to play a key role in the integrity of such representations, with D2-receptor activation rendering them flexible but weak. However, it is currently unknown whether and how D2-receptor activation affects prefrontal representations in humans.

Gender stereotype susceptibility.

Gender affects performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, and this impact may stem from socio-cultural factors such as gender stereotyping. Here we systematically manipulated gender stereotype messages on a social cognition task on which no initial gender gap has been documented. The outcome reveals: (i) Stereotyping affects both females and males, with a more pronounced impact on females.

Reward-related behavioral paradigms for addiction research in the mouse: performance of common inbred strains.

The mouse has emerged as a uniquely valuable species for studying the molecular and genetic basis of complex behaviors and modeling neuropsychiatric disease states. While valid and reliable preclinical assays for reward-related behaviors are critical to understanding addiction-related processes, and various behavioral procedures have been developed and characterized in rats and primates, there have been relatively few studies using operant-based addiction-relevant behavioral paradigms in the mouse. Here we describe the performance of the C57BL/6J inbred mouse strain on three major reward-related paradigms, and replicate the same procedures in two other commonly used inbred strains (DBA/2J, BALB/cJ).

A tele-otology course for primary care providers.

The shortage of otolaryngologists and the high incidence of ear disease in remote areas are major problems in Australia. We have developed a multimedia course for primary care providers that incorporates material about ear anatomy and physiology, ear disease, video-otoscopy and telemedicine software. The computer-based course was followed by a practical one-day course.