Modular, cement-free, customized headpost and connector-chamber implants for macaques.

Background: Neurophysiological studies with awake macaques typically require chronic cranial implants. Headpost and connector-chamber implants are used to allow head stabilization and to house connectors of chronically implanted electrodes, respectively.

New Method: We present long-lasting, modular, cement-free headpost implants made of titanium that consist of two pieces: a baseplate and a top part.

Advancing social behavioral neuroscience by integrating ethology and comparative psychology methods through machine learning.

Social behavior is naturally occurring in vertebrate species, which holds a strong evolutionary component and is crucial for the normal development and survival of individuals throughout life. Behavioral neuroscience has seen different influential methods for social behavioral phenotyping. The ethological research approach has extensively investigated social behavior in natural habitats, while the comparative psychology approach was developed utilizing standardized and univariate social behavioral tests.

Physiologic and Nanoscale Distinctions Define Glutamatergic Synapses in Tonic vs Phasic Neurons.

Neurons exhibit a striking degree of functional diversity, each one tuned to the needs of the circuitry in which it is embedded. A fundamental functional dichotomy occurs in activity patterns, with some neurons firing at a relatively constant "tonic" rate, while others fire in bursts, a "phasic" pattern. Synapses formed by tonic versus phasic neurons are also functionally differentiated, yet the bases of their distinctive properties remain enigmatic.

Delta-Band Neural Responses to Individual Words Are Modulated by Sentence Processing.

To understand language, we need to recognize words and combine them into phrases and sentences. During this process, responses to the words themselves are changed. In a step toward understanding how the brain builds sentence structure, the present study concerns the neural readout of this adaptation.

Neural Tracking in Infancy Predicts Language Development in Children With and Without Family History of Autism.

During speech processing, neural activity in non-autistic adults and infants tracks the speech envelope. Recent research in adults indicates that this neural tracking relates to linguistic knowledge and may be reduced in autism. Such reduced tracking, if present already in infancy, could impede language development.

The multimodal Munich Clinical Deep Phenotyping study to bridge the translational gap in severe mental illness treatment research.

Introduction: Treatment of severe mental illness (SMI) symptoms, especially negative symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, remains a major unmet need. There is good evidence that SMIs have a strong genetic background and are characterized by multiple biological alterations, including disturbed brain circuits and connectivity, dysregulated neuronal excitation-inhibition, disturbed dopaminergic and glutamatergic pathways, and partially dysregulated inflammatory processes. The ways in which the dysregulated signaling pathways are interconnected remains largely unknown, in part because well-characterized clinical studies on comprehensive biomaterial are lacking.

Histological and MRI brain atlas of the common shrew, , with brain region-specific gene expression profiles.

The common shrew, , is a small mammal of growing interest in neuroscience research, as it exhibits dramatic and reversible seasonal changes in individual brain size and organization (a process known as Dehnel's phenomenon). Despite decades of studies on this system, the mechanisms behind the structural changes during Dehnel's phenomenon are not yet understood. To resolve these questions and foster research on this unique species, we present the first combined histological, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and transcriptomic atlas of the common shrew brain.

Non-cell-autonomous regulation of interneuron specification mediated by extracellular vesicles.

Disruption in neurogenesis and neuronal migration can influence the assembly of cortical circuits, affecting the excitatory-inhibitory balance and resulting in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. Using ventral cerebral organoids and dorsoventral cerebral assembloids with mutations in the extracellular matrix gene , we show that extracellular vesicles released into the extracellular environment regulate the molecular differentiation of neurons, resulting in alterations in migratory dynamics. To investigate how extracellular vesicles affect neuronal specification and migration dynamics, we collected extracellular vesicles from ventral cerebral organoids carrying a mutation in , previously identified in individuals with cortical malformations and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Metabolic effects of early life stress and pre-pregnancy obesity are long lasting and sex specific in mice.

Early life stress (ELS) is associated with metabolic, cognitive, and psychiatric diseases and has a very high prevalence, highlighting the urgent need for a better understanding of the versatile physiological changes and identification of predictive biomarkers. In addition to programming the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, ELS may also affect the gut microbiota and metabolome, opening up a promising research direction for identifying early biomarkers of ELS-induced (mal)adaptation. Other factors affecting these parameters include maternal metabolic status and diet, with maternal obesity shown to predispose offspring to later metabolic disease.

Impaired perception of temporal contiguity between action and effect is associated with disorders of agency in schizophrenia.

Delusions of control in schizophrenia are characterized by the striking feeling that one's actions are controlled by external forces. We here tested qualitative predictions inspired by Bayesian causal inference models, which suggest that such misattributions of agency should lead to decreased intentional binding. Intentional binding refers to the phenomenon that subjects perceive a compression of time between their intentional actions and consequent sensory events.

Sites of transcription initiation drive mRNA isoform selection.

The generation of distinct messenger RNA isoforms through alternative RNA processing modulates the expression and function of genes, often in a cell-type-specific manner. Here, we assess the regulatory relationships between transcription initiation, alternative splicing, and 3' end site selection. Applying long-read sequencing to accurately represent even the longest transcripts from end to end, we quantify mRNA isoforms in Drosophila tissues, including the transcriptionally complex nervous system.

Patterns of risk-Using machine learning and structural neuroimaging to identify pedophilic offenders.

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) has become a focal point for lawmakers, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. With high prevalence rates around the world and far-reaching, often chronic, individual, and societal implications, CSA and its leading risk factor, pedophilia, have been well investigated. This has led to a wide range of clinical tools and actuarial instruments for diagnosis and risk assessment regarding CSA.

Sailing through the southern seas of air-sea CO flux uncertainty.

The Southern Ocean is among the largest contemporary sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide on our planet; however, remoteness, harsh weather and other circumstances have led to an undersampling of the ocean basin, compared with its northern hemispheric counterparts. While novel data interpolation methods can in part compensate for such data sparsity, recent studies raised awareness that we have hit a wall of unavoidable uncertainties in air-sea [Formula: see text] flux reconstructions. Here, we present results from autonomous observing campaigns using a novel platform to observe remote ocean regions: sailboats.

Synthesis of protective oral PrEP adherence levels in cisgender women using convergent clinical- and bottom-up modeling.

Globally, most HIV infections occur in heterosexual women in resource-limited settings. In these settings, female self-protection with generic emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate pre-exposure prophylaxis (FTC/TDF-PrEP) may constitute a major pillar of the HIV prevention portfolio. However, clinical trials in women had inconsistent outcomes, sparking uncertainty regarding risk-group specific adherence requirements and causing reluctance in testing and recommending on-demand regimen in women.

An ERK-dependent molecular switch antagonizes fibrosis and promotes regeneration in spiny mice ().

Although most mammals heal injured tissues and organs with scarring, spiny mice () naturally regenerate skin and complex musculoskeletal tissues. Now, the core signaling pathways driving mammalian tissue regeneration are poorly characterized. Here, we show that, while immediate extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) activation is a shared feature of scarring () and regenerating () injuries, ERK activity is only sustained at high levels during complex tissue regeneration.

Perceptual learning of random acoustic patterns: Impact of temporal regularity and attention.

Perceptual learning is a powerful mechanism to enhance perceptual abilities and to form robust memory representations of previously unfamiliar sounds. Memory formation through repeated exposure takes place even for random and complex acoustic patterns devoid of semantic content. The current study sought to scrutinise how perceptual learning of random acoustic patterns is shaped by two potential modulators: temporal regularity of pattern repetition and listeners' attention.

Efficient coding of natural scenes improves neural system identification.

Neural system identification aims at learning the response function of neurons to arbitrary stimuli using experimentally recorded data, but typically does not leverage normative principles such as efficient coding of natural environments. Visual systems, however, have evolved to efficiently process input from the natural environment. Here, we present a normative network regularization for system identification models by incorporating, as a regularizer, the efficient coding hypothesis, which states that neural response properties of sensory representations are strongly shaped by the need to preserve most of the stimulus information with limited resources.

Free-viewing gaze patterns reveal a mood-congruency bias in MDD during an affective fMRI/eye-tracking task.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been related to abnormal amygdala activity during emotional face processing. However, a recent large-scale study (n = 28,638) found no such correlation, which is probably due to the low precision of fMRI measurements. To address this issue, we used simultaneous fMRI and eye-tracking measurements during a commonly employed emotional face recognition task.

Slow integrin-dependent migration organizes networks of tissue-resident mast cells.

Immune cell locomotion is associated with amoeboid migration, a flexible mode of movement, which depends on rapid cycles of actin polymerization and actomyosin contraction. Many immune cells do not necessarily require integrins, the major family of adhesion receptors in mammals, to move productively through three-dimensional tissue spaces. Instead, they can use alternative strategies to transmit their actin-driven forces to the substrate, explaining their migratory adaptation to changing external environments.

Statistically Optimal Force Aggregation for Coarse-Graining Molecular Dynamics.

Machine-learned coarse-grained (CG) models have the potential for simulating large molecular complexes beyond what is possible with atomistic molecular dynamics. However, training accurate CG models remains a challenge. A widely used methodology for learning bottom-up CG force fields maps forces from all-atom molecular dynamics to the CG representation and matches them with a CG force field on average.

Macroscale Thalamic Functional Organization Disturbances and Underlying Core Cytoarchitecture in Early-Onset Schizophrenia.

Background And Hypothesis: Schizophrenia is a polygenetic mental disorder with heterogeneous positive and negative symptom constellations, and is associated with abnormal cortical connectivity. The thalamus has a coordinative role in cortical function and is key to the development of the cerebral cortex. Conversely, altered functional organization of the thalamus might relate to overarching cortical disruptions in schizophrenia, anchored in development.

Integrating Multi-Omics Data to Construct Reliable Interconnected Models of Signaling, Gene Regulatory, and Metabolic Pathways.

Alteration of the status of the metabolic enzymes could be a probable way to regulate metabolic reprogramming, which is a critical cellular adaptation mechanism especially for cancer cells. Coordination among biological pathways, such as gene-regulatory, signaling, and metabolic pathways is crucial for regulating metabolic adaptation. Also, incorporation of resident microbial metabolic potential in human body can influence the interplay between the microbiome and the systemic or tissue metabolic environments.

Transdiagnostic evaluation of epigenetic age acceleration and burden of psychiatric disorders.

Different psychiatric disorders as well as exposure to adverse life events have individually been associated with multiple age-related diseases and mortality. Age acceleration in different epigenetic clocks can serve as biomarker for such risk and could help to disentangle the interplay of psychiatric comorbidity and early adversity on age-related diseases and mortality. We evaluated five epigenetic clocks (Horvath, Hannum, PhenoAge, GrimAge and DunedinPoAm) in a transdiagnostic psychiatric sample using epigenome-wide DNA methylation data from peripheral blood of 429 subjects from two studies at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry.