Self-experience of a negative event alters responses to others in similar states through prefrontal cortex CRF mechanisms.

Our own experience of emotional events influences how we approach and react to others' emotions. Here we observe that mice exhibit divergent interindividual responses to others in stress (that is, preference or avoidance) only if they have previously experienced the same aversive event. These responses are estrus dependent in females and dominance dependent in males.

Nucleus accumbens D1- and D2-expressing neurons control the balance between feeding and activity-mediated energy expenditure.

Accumulating evidence points to dysregulations of the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) in eating disorders (ED), however its precise contribution to ED symptomatic dimensions remains unclear. Using chemogenetic manipulations in male mice, we found that activity of dopamine D1 receptor-expressing neurons of the NAc core subregion facilitated effort for a food reward as well as voluntary exercise, but decreased food intake, while D2-expressing neurons have opposite effects. These effects are congruent with D2-neurons being more active than D1-neurons during feeding while it is the opposite during running.

Arthropod food webs predicted from body size ratios are improved by incorporating prey defensive properties.

Trophic interactions are often deduced from body size differences, assuming that predators prefer prey smaller than themselves because larger prey are more difficult to subdue. This has mainly been confirmed in aquatic ecosystems, but rarely in terrestrial ecosystems, especially in arthropods. Our goal was to validate whether body size ratios can predict trophic interactions in a terrestrial, plant-associated arthropod community and whether predator hunting strategy and prey taxonomy could explain additional variation.

The Addiction-Susceptibility TaqIA/Ankk1 Controls Reward and Metabolism Through D Receptor-Expressing Neurons.

Background: A large body of evidence highlights the importance of genetic variants in the development of psychiatric and metabolic conditions. Among these, the TaqIA polymorphism is one of the most commonly studied in psychiatry. TaqIA is located in the gene that codes for the ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1 kinase (Ankk1) near the dopamine D receptor (D2R) gene.

A synaptomic analysis reveals dopamine hub synapses in the mouse striatum.

Dopamine transmission is involved in reward processing and motor control, and its impairment plays a central role in numerous neurological disorders. Despite its strong pathophysiological relevance, the molecular and structural organization of the dopaminergic synapse remains to be established. Here, we used targeted labelling and fluorescence activated sorting to purify striatal dopaminergic synaptosomes.

Disrupting D1-NMDA or D2-NMDA receptor heteromerization prevents cocaine's rewarding effects but preserves natural reward processing.

Addictive drugs increase dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), where it persistently shapes excitatory glutamate transmission and hijacks natural reward processing. Here, we provide evidence, from mice to humans, that an underlying mechanism relies on drug-evoked heteromerization of glutamate -methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) with dopamine receptor 1 (D1R) or 2 (D2R). Using temporally controlled inhibition of D1R-NMDAR heteromerization, we unraveled their selective implication in early phases of cocaine-mediated synaptic, morphological, and behavioral responses.

Detecting G protein-coupled receptor complexes in postmortem human brain with proximity ligation assay and a Bayesian classifier.

Despite the controversy regarding the existence and physiological relevance of class A G protein-coupled receptor dimerization, there is substantial evidence for functional interactions between the dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) and the adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR). A2AR-D2R complexes have been detected in rodent brains by proximity ligation assay; however, their existence in the human brain has not been demonstrated. In this study, we used Brightfield proximity ligation assay, combined with a systematic sampling and a parameter-free naive Bayesian classifier, and demonstrated proximity between the D2R and the A2AR in the adult human ventral striatum, consistent with their colocalization within complexes and the possible existence of D2R-A2AR heteromers.

Decrease in Operant Responding Under Obesogenic Diet Exposure is not Related to Deficits in Incentive or Hedonic Processes.

Objective: A growing body of evidence suggests that obesity could result from alterations in reward processing. In rodent models, chronic exposure to an obesogenic diet leads to blunted dopamine signaling and related incentive responding. This study aimed to determine which reward-related behavioral dimensions are actually impacted by obesogenic diet exposure.

Modulation and functions of dopamine receptor heteromers in drugs of abuse-induced adaptations.

Drug addiction is a chronic and relapsing disorder that leads to compulsive drug intake despite deleterious consequences. By increasing dopamine (DA) in the mesolimbic system, drugs of abuse hijack the brain reward circuitry, which is critical for the development of enduring behavioral alterations. DA mainly acts onto DA D1 (D1R) and D2 (D2R) receptor subtypes, which are positively and negatively coupled to adenylyl cyclase, respectively.

SAMuS: service-oriented architecture for multisensor surveillance in smart homes.

The design of a service-oriented architecture for multisensor surveillance in smart homes is presented as an integrated solution enabling automatic deployment, dynamic selection, and composition of sensors. Sensors are implemented as Web-connected devices, with a uniform Web API. RESTdesc is used to describe the sensors and a novel solution is presented to automatically compose Web APIs that can be applied with existing Semantic Web reasoners.

Semantic patient information aggregation and medicinal decision support.

Although the health care sector has already been subjected to a major computerization effort, this effort is often limited to the implementation of standalone systems which do not communicate with each other. Interoperability problems limit health care applications from achieving their full potential. In this paper, we propose the use of Semantic Web technologies to solve interoperability problems between data providers.

Different effects of ethnic diversity on social capital: density of foundations and leisure associations in Amsterdam neighbourhoods.

This article examines the effect of ethnic diversity on social capital in Amsterdam neighbourhoods by looking at the effects of the ethnic diversity of a neighbourhood on the social networks that underpin civil society. A distinction is made between homogeneous, more individually oriented social networks, on the one hand, and horizontal heterogeneous networks on the other. The density of foundations—i.

Young Dutch people's experiences of trading sex: a qualitative study.

In recent years, the subject of transactional sex among young Dutch people has generated a heated social debate in the Netherlands. However, accurate data on this phenomenon are scarce. This article describes the findings of a qualitative study on young Dutch people's experiences of having sex in return for money or a material reward.

A hybrid algorithm for solving the EEG inverse problem from spatio-temporal EEG data.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder caused by intense electrical activity in the brain. The electrical activity, which can be modelled through the superposition of several electrical dipoles, can be determined in a non-invasive way by analysing the electro-encephalogram. This source localization requires the solution of an inverse problem.

Extracting the spike process from the EEG by spatially constrained ICA.

Epileptic patients often show interictal epileptic discharges (IED's) in the electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded between seizures. This epileptiform activity is in many cases related to the location of the seizure onset, and is believed to reflect the frequency of the seizures. We present a fully automated technique that is able to extract the IED's from the EEG, despite the obscuring artifacts.

Muscle and eye movement artifact removal prior to EEG source localization.

Muscle and eye movement artifacts are very prominent in the ictal EEG of patients suffering from epilepsy, thus making the dipole localization of ictal activity very unreliable. Recently, two techniques (BSS-CCA and pSVD) were developed to remove those artifacts. The purpose of this study is to assess whether the removal of muscle and eye movement artifacts improves the EEG dipole source localization.

Geometrical importance sampling and pulse height tallies in GATE.

Monte Carlo simulations are widely used to study the behavior and detection of gamma photons in medical imaging devices. Such simulations are computationally expensive. This is why geometrical importance sampling, a variance reduction technique, was recently incorporated into the GEANT4 Monte Carlo code.

Compression and reconstruction of sorted PET listmode data.

Background: In nuclear medicine data can be stored in histogram or listmode format. The most popular histogram format is the planar projection format. Due to the increase in detector blocks, the improved energy resolution and the trends towards time of flight, dynamic and gated imaging, it can be more appropriate to store the data in listmode format.

A finite difference method with reciprocity used to incorporate anisotropy in electroencephalogram dipole source localization.

Many implementations of electroencephalogram (EEG) dipole source localization neglect the anisotropical conductivities inherent to brain tissues, such as the skull and white matter anisotropy. An examination of dipole localization errors is made in EEG source analysis, due to not incorporating the anisotropic properties of the conductivity of the skull and white matter. First, simulations were performed in a 5 shell spherical head model using the analytical formula.

Hex-splines: a novel spline family for hexagonal lattices.

This paper proposes a new family of bivariate, nonseparable splines, called hex-splines, especially designed for hexagonal lattices. The starting point of the construction is the indicator function of the Voronoi cell, which is used to define in a natural way the first-order hex-spline. Higher order hex-splines are obtained by successive convolutions.

GATE: a simulation toolkit for PET and SPECT.

Monte Carlo simulation is an essential tool in emission tomography that can assist in the design of new medical imaging devices, the optimization of acquisition protocols and the development or assessment of image reconstruction algorithms and correction techniques. GATE, the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission, encapsulates the Geant4 libraries to achieve a modular, versatile, scripted simulation toolkit adapted to the field of nuclear medicine. In particular, GATE allows the description of time-dependent phenomena such as source or detector movement, and source decay kinetics.

A three-dimensional theoretical model incorporating spatial detection uncertainty in continuous detector PET.

In this paper, we will describe a theoretical model of the spatial uncertainty for a line of response, due to the imperfect localization of events on the detector heads of a positron emission tomography (PET) camera. The forward acquisition problem is modelled by a Gaussian distribution of the position of interaction on a detector head, centred at the measured position. The a posteriori probability that an event originates from a certain point in the field of view (FOV) is calculated by integrating all the possible lines of response (LORs) through this point, weighted with the Gaussian detection likelihood at the LOR's end points.