Neuronal ensemble dynamics in associative learning.

Associative learning restructures the activity of numerous neurons distributed across cortical and subcortical regions. Individual neurons change the rate or timing of spiking patterns in response to environmental stimuli as they become associated with salient outcomes. Recent large-scale activity monitoring in rodents has uncovered that these learning-related changes occur concertedly across groups of neurons within and between brain regions.

When Less is better: Messages that Present Dietary Carbon Emissions Data at the individual (vs. Aggregate) Level Increase Commitment to Sustainable Beef Consumption.

The environmental footprint embedded in the human diet is massive. To convey the enormity of the problem, persuasive environmental messages often report large-scale, aggregate data (such as the billions of tons of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere annually by the beef industry.) Is this strategy effective? In five studies (total N = 1237), the environmental footprint of beef was presented to participants with either aggregate, nation-level numeric data, or with the same data scaled to the individual level.

: Identification and Neurodevelopmental Contributions of an Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability Susceptibility Gene.

Over the last one and a half decades, copy number variation and whole-genome sequencing studies have illuminated the considerable genetic heterogeneity that underlies the etiologies of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID). These investigations support the idea that ASD may result from complex interactions between susceptibility-related genetic variants (single nucleotide variants or copy number variants) and the environment. This review outlines the identification and neurobiological characterization of two such genes located in Xp22.

Time to Break the "Lock-In" Impediments to Chemicals Management.

Despite enormous national, regional, and global efforts on chemical management, the widespread use of hazardous chemicals continues in many parts of the world even after decades of there being well-known risks to public and/or ecosystem health. This continued supply and use, despite strong evidence of negative impacts, is not unique to chemicals management. In the field of climate change, the concept of "lock-in" has been used to explain the complex interactions among economic, social, technological, and political dynamics that reinforce global reliance on the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

Ninety Years of Pentamidine: The Development and Applications of Pentamidine and its Analogs.

Pentamidine, an FDA-approved human drug for many protozoal infections, was initially synthesized in the late 1930s and first reported to be curative for parasitosis in the 1940s. After ninety years of sometimes quiet growth, pentamidine and its derivatives have gone far beyond antibacterial agents, including but not limited to the ligands of DNA minor groove, modulators of PPIs (protein-protein interactions) of the transmembrane domain 5 of lateral membrane protein 1, and the blockers of the SARS-CoV-2 3a channel. This mini-review highlights the development and applications of pentamidine and its analogs, aiming to provide insights for further developing pentamidine derivatives in the following decades.

Association between risk of obstructive sleep apnea, inflammation and cognition after 45 years old in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Background: The association between obstructive sleep apnea and cognitive functioning is not yet fully understood and could be influenced by factors such as sex, age and systemic inflammation. We determined the sex- and age-specific association between obstructive sleep apnea risk and cognitive performance, and the influence of systemic inflammation on this association.

Methods: We included 25,899 participants from the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging comprehensive cohort, aged 45-85 years (51% women).

Ageist Communication Experienced by Middle-Aged and Older Canadians.

Ageism has been well-documented in the United States, but ageism experiences in Canada remain less well-known. To address this gap, in the current research middle-aged and older Canadians completed a conversational interview in which they described their ageism experiences. Their descriptions were coded for life domain, perpetrator, and type of ageist communication.

Communicating safety precautions can help maintain in-person voter turnout during a pandemic.

Scholars have linked cost and life stress to lower voter turnout with clear implications for voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask whether COVID-19 reduces turnout intention and how election agencies can mitigate this effect. We use a series of six survey and conjoint experiments implemented in samples totalling over 28,000 Canadian respondents collected between July and November of 2020 to show that: 1) priming people to think about COVID-19 reduces turnout intention, especially among those who feel most threatened by the disease; 2) safety measures for in-person voting, such as mandatory masks and physical distancing, can improve safety perceptions and willingness to vote in-person, and 3) providing people information about safety precautions for in-person voting mitigates the negative effect of priming COVID-19.

Diet-induced deficits in goal-directed control are rescued by agonism of group II metabotropic glutamate receptors in the dorsomedial striatum.

Many overweight or obese people struggle to sustain the behavioural changes necessary to achieve and maintain weight loss. In rodents, obesogenic diet can disrupt goal-directed control of responding for food reinforcers, which may indicate that diet can disrupt brain regions associated with behavioural control. We investigated a potential glutamatergic mechanism to return goal-directed control to rats who had been given an obesogenic diet prior to operant training.

Bacteriophages: Combating Antimicrobial Resistance in Food-Borne Bacteria Prevalent in Agriculture.

Through recent decades, the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics within agriculture has led to the widespread development of antimicrobial resistance. This problem not only impacts the productivity and sustainability of current agriculture but also has the potential to transfer antimicrobial resistance to human pathogens via the food supply chain. An increasingly popular alternative to antibiotics is bacteriophages to control bacterial diseases.

Intersectional inequalities in younger women's experiences of physical intimate partner violence across communities in Bangladesh.

Background: Physical intimate partner violence (IPV) risk looms large for younger women in Bangladesh. We are, however, yet to know the association between their intersectional social locations and IPV across communities. Drawing on intersectionality theory's tenet that interacting systems of power, oppressions, and privileges work together, we hypothesized that (1) younger, lower educated or poor women's physical IPV experiences will be exacerbated in disadvantaged communities; and conversely, (2) younger, higher educated or nonpoor women's physical IPV experiences will be ameliorated in advantaged communities.

Is a downwards head tilt a cross-cultural signal of dominance? Evidence for a universal visual illusion.

The present pre-registered research provides the first evidence that a downwards head tilt is sufficient to communicate dominance from a neutral facial expression among the Mayangna, members of an unindustrialized, small-scale traditional society in Nicaragua who have had minimal exposure to North American culture. Consistent with the Action Unit imposter effect observed in North American populations (Witkower and Tracy in Psychol Sci 30:893-906, 2019), changes to the appearance of the upper face caused by a downwards head tilt were sufficient to elicit perceptions of dominance among this population. Given that the Mayangna are unlikely to associate a downwards head tilt or related apparent facial changes with dominance as a result of cross-cultural learning, the present results suggest that perceptions of dominance formed from a downwards head tilt, and the visual illusion shaping these perceptions, are a widely generalizable, and possibly universal, feature of human psychology.

Single and Partnered Individuals' Sexual Satisfaction as a Function of Sexual Desire and Activities: Results Using a Sexual Satisfaction Scale Demonstrating Measurement Invariance Across Partnership Status.

Although some evidence exists to suggest that single (i.e., unpartnered) individuals are less sexually satisfied on average than are partnered individuals, it is unclear whether the variables correlating with each group's sexual satisfaction are similar or different.

The Association between Fast Food Outlets and Overweight in Adolescents Is Confounded by Neighbourhood Deprivation: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study.

The aim of our study is to utilise longitudinal data to explore if the association between the retail fast food environment and overweight in adolescents is confounded by neighbourhood deprivation. Data from the Millennium Cohort Study for England were obtained for waves 5 (ages 11/12; 2011/12; = 13,469) and 6 (ages 14/15; 2014/15; = 11,884). Our outcome variable was overweight/obesity defined using age and sex-specific International Obesity Task Force cut points.

Nature of Acquired Immune Responses, Epitope Specificity and Resultant Protection from SARS-CoV-2.

The primary global response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been to bring to the clinic as rapidly as possible a number of vaccines that are predicted to enhance immunity to this viral infection. While the rapidity with which these vaccines have been developed and tested (at least for short-term efficacy and safety) is commendable, it should be acknowledged that this has occurred despite the lack of research into, and understanding of, the immune elements important for natural host protection against the virus, making this endeavor a somewhat unique one in medical history. In contrast, as pointed out in the review below, there were already important past observations that suggested that respiratory infections at mucosal surfaces were susceptible to immune clearance by mechanisms not typical of infections caused by systemic (blood-borne) pathogens.

Lateral Entorhinal Cortex Suppresses Drift in Cortical Memory Representations.

Memory retrieval is thought to depend on the reinstatement of cortical memory representations guided by pattern completion processes in the hippocampus. The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) is one of the intermediary regions supporting hippocampal-cortical interactions and houses neurons that prospectively signal past events in a familiar environment. To investigate the functional relevance of the activity of the LEC for cortical reinstatement, we pharmacologically inhibited the LEC and examined its impact on the stability of ensemble firing patterns in one of the efferent targets of the LEC, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).

Prediction errors disrupt hippocampal representations and update episodic memories.

The brain supports adaptive behavior by generating predictions, learning from errors, and updating memories to incorporate new information. Prediction error, or surprise, triggers learning when reality contradicts expectations. Prior studies have shown that the hippocampus signals prediction errors, but the hypothesized link to memory updating has not been demonstrated.

Chemotherapy-Induced Cognitive Impairment and Hippocampal Neurogenesis: A Review of Physiological Mechanisms and Interventions.

A wide range of cognitive deficits, including memory loss associated with hippocampal dysfunction, have been widely reported in cancer survivors who received chemotherapy. Changes in both white matter and gray matter volume have been observed following chemotherapy treatment, with reduced volume in the medial temporal lobe thought to be due in part to reductions in hippocampal neurogenesis. Pre-clinical rodent models confirm that common chemotherapeutic agents used to treat various forms of non-CNS cancers reduce rates of hippocampal neurogenesis and impair performance on hippocampally-mediated learning and memory tasks.

Alpha suppression indexes a spotlight of visual-spatial attention that can shine on both perceptual and memory representations.

Although researchers have been recording the human electroencephalogram (EEG) for almost a century, we still do not completely understand what cognitive processes are measured by the activity of different frequency bands. The 8- to 12-Hz activity in the alpha band has long been a focus of this research, but our understanding of its links to cognitive mechanisms has been rapidly evolving recently. Here, we review and discuss the existing evidence for two competing perspectives about alpha activity.

Technologies and perspectives for achieving carbon neutrality.

Global development has been heavily reliant on the overexploitation of natural resources since the Industrial Revolution. With the extensive use of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other forms of land-use change, anthropogenic activities have contributed to the ever-increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, causing global climate change. In response to the worsening global climate change, achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is the most pressing task on the planet.

The hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex jointly represent task structure during memory-guided decision making.

The hippocampus, well known for its role in episodic memory, might also be an important brain region for extracting structure from our experiences in order to guide future decisions. Recent evidence in rodents suggests that the hippocampus supports decision making by representing task structure in cooperation with the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Here, we examine how the human hippocampus and OFC represent task structure during an associative learning task that required learning of both context-determined and context-invariant probabilistic associations.

Flexible Use of Spatial Frames of Reference for Object-Location Memory in Older Adults.

In memory, representations of spatial features are stored in different reference frames; features relative to our position are stored egocentrically and features relative to each other are stored allocentrically. Accessing these representations engages many cognitive and neural resources, and so is susceptible to age-related breakdown. Yet, recent findings on the heterogeneity of cognitive function and spatial ability in healthy older adults suggest that aging may not uniformly impact the flexible use of spatial representations.

The item-specific proportion congruency effect can be contaminated by short-term repetition priming.

The item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effect reflects the phenomenon that Stroop congruency effects are larger for Stroop items that are more likely to be congruent (MC) than incongruent (MI). While the ISPC effect is purported to reflect long-term memory associations, the proportion manipulation entails that stimulus repetitions vary as a function of the MC and MI conditions, suggesting that a short-term repetition priming process may also contribute. In the present study, we investigated whether the ISPC effect reflected contributions from separate long-term associative learning and short-term repetition priming processes.