Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Caitlin S. Mallory, Kiah Hardcastle, Malcolm G. Campbell, Alexander Attinger, Isabel I. C. Low, Jennifer L. Raymond, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: Neural circuits in the medial temporal lobe construct a map-like representation of space that supports navigation by integrating multiple sensory cues and cues related to the individual's movement through the environment. The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) encodes three-dimensional head movement, eye position, and velocity, alongside other self-motion signals in individual neurons, such as body position, running speed, and azimuthal head direction.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Alan J. Emanuel, Brendan P. Lehnert, Stefano Panzeri, Christopher D. Harvey, David D. Ginty
Summary: Research shows that signals from physiologically distinct mechanoreceptor subtypes are extensively integrated and transformed within the subcortical somatosensory system to generate cortical representations of touch.
Article
Plant Sciences
Thomas Wieloch, Thomas David Sharkey, Roland Anton Werner, Juergen Schleucher
Summary: This study demonstrates the use of intramolecular C-13/C-12 analysis to understand carbon uptake and allocation in plants, providing more comprehensive assessments of carbon metabolism than whole-molecule C-13/C-12 analysis. The research also proposes experimentally testable theories on the origin of the intramolecular signal.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Courtney L. Van Den Elzen, Nathan Sigman, Nancy C. Emery
Summary: Dispersal is an important mechanism for organisms to adapt to environmental variation. This study tracked the dispersal patterns of three plant species in their natural habitats and identified the plant traits causing variation in seed dispersal. The results showed that average seed dispersal distance was inconsistent with the variation in habitat, while the minimum inter-seed distance aligned with the minimum habitat variation.
FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Alessandro Corbetta, Vlado Menkovski, Roberto Benzi, Federico Toschi
Summary: The study demonstrates that deep neural networks can accurately estimate Reynolds number with higher precision in small sample sizes, compared to conventional physics-based statistical estimators.
Article
Neurosciences
Sara Spadone, Annalisa Tosoni, Stefania Della Penna, Carlo Sestieri
Summary: This study investigates the dynamic properties and spatial distribution of oscillatory power modulations in the lateral parietal lobe during an item recognition task. The findings suggest that the alpha ERD in the intraparietal sulcus might represent a neural signature of the evidence accumulation process during simple memory-based decisions.
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
M. Mendiolar, J. A. Filar, W. -H. Yang, S. Leahy, A. J. Courtney
Summary: This study develops a family of weighted indices called IMPIT indices extracted from environmental signals, which are used to explain important response variables. A user-friendly software tool called IMPIT-a is developed to facilitate the construction and calibration of these indices. Examples of IMPIT indices extracted from the Southern Oscillation Index and sea surface temperature signals are provided, and their applications to two fished species in Queensland waters and wheat yield in New South Wales are illustrated.
ENVIRONMENTAL MODELLING & SOFTWARE
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Gregory C. Johnson, Caitlin B. Whalen, Sarah G. Purkey, Nathalie Zilberman
Summary: Vertical velocity variances and dominant vertical wavelengths show regional variations, with larger root < w '(2)> and shorter lambda(z) in regions of rougher bathymetry or stronger deep currents.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Raquel Viso, Saul Blanco
Summary: The time required for diatom assemblages to integrate the abiotic variables of the aquatic environment has been a subject of discussion. This study compares the widely used Specific Polluosensitivity Index (SPI) with the Water Quality Index (WQI) in the Duero Basin. The results show that diatom indices actually indicate past water conditions in rivers.
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Kathleen R. Trafton, Thomas Giachetti
Summary: Our study found that the size, shape, density, and texture of Plinian pyroclasts are closely related and influenced by the position of the magma in the conduit before fragmentation. Additionally, a portion of smaller-sized pyroclasts may have formed as agglomerates within the conduit during or after primary fragmentation.
EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCE LETTERS
(2021)
Review
Fisheries
Gabriela Tomas Jeronimo, Matheus Gomes Cruz, Elisabeth de Aguiar Bertaglia, William Eduardo Furtado, Mauricio Laterca Martins
Summary: This review highlights the importance of fish parasites as biological indicators of environmental quality, both in terms of their response to changes in water parameters and pollutants, and their ability to accumulate trace elements. The study also evaluates the potential application of fish parasites as environmental sentinels in fish farming environments.
REVIEWS IN AQUACULTURE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Kaito Kikuchi, Leticia Galera-Laporta, Colleen Weatherwax, Jamie Y. Lam, Eun Chae Moon, Emmanuel A. Theodorakis, Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo, Gurol M. Suel
Summary: Despite their dormant state, bacterial spores are able to sense environmental signals through a preexisting electrochemical potential and integrate these signals over time, affecting their decision to exit dormancy.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Xinyu Shui, Yiling Chen, Xin Hu, Fei Wang, Dan Zhang
Summary: The popularity of wearable physiological recording devices has provided new possibilities for assessing personality traits in everyday life. In this study, a commercial bracelet was used to track the heart rate (HR) data of eighty male college students over ten consecutive working days in various daily situations. Regression analyses revealed significant correlations between HR-based features and the dimensions of Openness and Extraversion in multiple situations. The findings suggest that daily multi-situation physiological measures can provide insights into the link between personality and heart rate.
IEEE JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH INFORMATICS
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Oleksandra O. Shumilova, Alexander N. Sukhodolov
Summary: This article presents a dataset on the turbulent flow structure in riffle-pool sequences of a natural river. It includes two case studies and two field-based experiments, providing detailed information about the three-dimensional structure of mean and turbulent flows. The dataset can be used for examination of scaling effects and validation of numerical models.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Aida Pitarch, Javier Dieguez-Uribeondo, Laura Martin-Torrijos, Fabrizio Sergio, Guillermo Blanco
Summary: This study found that environmental degradation can lead to a higher prevalence of pathogenic fungal species in the oral cavity of black kites, favoring oral disease. The composition of the oral fungal community differed between symptomatic and asymptomatic nestlings, and was influenced by anthropogenic and natural environmental factors. Monitoring oral mycobiome could serve as a bioindication of oral disease and environmental degradation.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Caitlin S. Mallory, Kiah Hardcastle, Malcolm G. Campbell, Alexander Attinger, Isabel I. C. Low, Jennifer L. Raymond, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: Neural circuits in the medial temporal lobe construct a map-like representation of space that supports navigation by integrating multiple sensory cues and cues related to the individual's movement through the environment. The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) encodes three-dimensional head movement, eye position, and velocity, alongside other self-motion signals in individual neurons, such as body position, running speed, and azimuthal head direction.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Editorial Material
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Mark H. Plitt, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: The recent study using new holographic optogenetic stimulation technology provides direct evidence that hippocampal place cell activity is sufficient to drive memory and navigation-related behaviors.
Article
Neurosciences
Mark H. Plitt, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: The hippocampus contains neural representations capable of supporting declarative memory, with place cells firing in specific locations in different environments. Through large-scale in vivo recordings, it was found that hippocampal remapping across contexts can be precisely predicted by the animal's experience and approximates optimal probabilistic inference. This suggests that place cell remapping allows animals to identify their physical location and estimate the identity of the environment optimally.
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Review
Neurosciences
Marielena Sosa, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: The ability to remember and navigate to spatial locations associated with rewards, such as food or safety, is crucial for survival. The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex play key roles in storing and retrieving reward-related information in the brain by representing physical and mental space as a series of states. This proposal is supported by recent advances in both experimental and theoretical neuroscience, aiming to provide an integrated framework for understanding navigation to reward as a fundamental feature of many cognitive processes.
NATURE REVIEWS NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
R. G. K. Munn, A. Freeburn, D. P. Finn, H. C. Heller
Summary: Down Syndrome is a genetic condition caused by trisomy 21, leading to difficulties in learning and memory. The hippocampus has been found to play a key role in learning and memory, and recent research with mouse models of Down Syndrome has shown differences in hippocampal activity. Excess GABAergic innervation from the Medial Septum to the hippocampus is thought to be one of the main functional differences in Down Syndrome. In this study, the activity of region CA1 in the hippocampus was examined in Ts65Dn mice compared to their non-trisomic 2N littermates using in vivo electrophysiology. While the spatial properties of place cells in CA1 were normal in Ts65Dn mice, there were profound alterations in the phasic relationship of both CA1 place cells and gamma rhythms to theta rhythm. These findings suggest that the overall network state of the hippocampus is critically important for its function and provide further evidence for excess inhibitory control as the cause of hippocampal dysfunction in Down Syndrome.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Review
Cell Biology
Mahshid H. Dehkordi, Robert G. K. Munn, Howard O. Fearnhead
Summary: Caspases are a family of proteases that play crucial roles in cell death processes, particularly apoptosis. However, they are also involved in various non-apoptotic processes, especially in regulating neuronal cell behaviors.
FRONTIERS IN CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
(2022)
Editorial Material
Neurosciences
Isabel I. C. Low, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: Pettit, Yuan, and Harvey discovered that hippocampal spatial maps degrade when mice voluntarily disengage from a navigation task, even without changes in sensory or self-motion cues. This suggests that internal state might play an active role in supporting navigational coding and spatial memory.
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Editorial Material
Veterinary Sciences
Alexander Gonzalez, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: A new study combines a novel behavioral paradigm in rats and humans with reinforcement learning to infer shared computations for goal-directed navigation.
Article
Neurosciences
Ben Sorscher, Gabriel C. Mel, Samuel A. Ocko, Lisa M. Giocomo, Surya Ganguli
Summary: The discovery of entorhinal grid cells has sparked interest in understanding the emergence of hexagonal firing fields in neural circuits and their computational significance. In this study, we demonstrate that hexagonal grids can arise in neural networks trained for path integration under biologically plausible constraints. We also provide a unified theory for the prevalence of hexagonal grids in path-integrator circuits. Our trained networks offer mechanistic hypotheses and capture biological variability better than hand-designed models. Additionally, we develop methods to analyze the connectome and activity maps of our networks, revealing fundamental mechanisms underlying path integration in a generalizable manner.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Linlin Z. Fan, Doo Kyung Kim, Joshua H. Jennings, He Tian, Peter Y. Wang, Charu Ramakrishnan, Sawyer Randles, Yanjun Sun, Elina Thadhani, Yoon Seok Kim, Sean Quirin, Lisa Giocomo, Adam E. Cohen, Karl Deisseroth
Summary: Learning-induced modifications of synaptic and circuit properties storing information in mammals have been unclear. This study used genetically targeted voltage imaging and optogenetic activation to show that specific optogenetic activation of CA1 cells induced stable representations of specific places. It was found that presynaptic CA2/3 cells were required for inducing plasticity in CA1, and during the induction of place fields in single CA1 cells, synaptic input from CA2/3 onto these same cells was potentiated. These findings reveal the synaptic mechanisms underlying hippocampal behavioral timescale plasticity during learning and memory in behaving mammals.
Article
Neurosciences
Emily A. Aery Jones, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: The brain represents behaviorally relevant information through the firing of individual neurons and ensembles of neurons. Ensembles in the hippocampus and associated cortical regions support navigation through various types of codes, including single cell codes, population codes, time-compressed sequences, behavioral sequences, and engrams. Traditional definitions of ensembles can constrain or expand potential analyses, and coding can change at the ensemble level while single cell codes remain intact. Broader ensemble definitions are needed to better understand the complexity of the brain.
CURRENT OPINION IN NEUROBIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Yanjun Sun, Lisa M. Giocomo
Summary: This study reveals that a subset of neurons in the hippocampus of mice encode drug-associated contextual information, providing insight into how drug abuse alters hippocampal circuitry to encode drug-context associations.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Robert G. K. Munn, Amy Wolff, Lucinda J. Speers, David K. Bilkey
Summary: Maternal immune activation (MIA) increases the risk for schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders. In rat models, MIA mimics the brain and behavioral changes seen in schizophrenia, including memory impairment. This study re-analyzed previous electrophysiological recordings of the hippocampus in MIA and control rats to investigate temporal dysfunction. The findings suggest abnormal gamma power and coherence, altered phase precession of place cells, and an increase in sharp-wave ripple events in the hippocampus of MIA rats, highlighting circuit-level changes that may contribute to information processing deficits in schizophrenia.
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
S. Wenceslao Evans, Dong-Qing Shi, Mariya Chavarha, Mark H. Plitt, Jiannis Taxidis, Blake Madruga, Jiang Lan Fan, Fuu-Jiun Hwang, Siri C. van Keulen, Carl-Mikael Suomivuori, Michelle M. Pang, Sharon Su, Sungmoo Lee, Yukun A. Hao, Guofeng Zhang, Dongyun Jiang, Lagnajeet Pradhan, Richard H. Roth, Yu Liu, Conor C. Dorian, Austin L. Reese, Adrian Negrean, Attila Losonczy, Christopher D. Makinson, Sui Wang, Thomas R. Clandinin, Ron O. Dror, Jun B. Ding, Na Ji, Peyman Golshani, Lisa M. Giocomo, Guo-Qiang Bi, Michael Z. Lin
Summary: By inverting the fluorescence-voltage relationship, the photostability of ASAP family genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) has been enhanced. Two improved GEVIs, ASAP4b and ASAP4e, enable single-trial detection and recording in standard one- and two-photon microscopes with better temporal resolution. They can simultaneously detect voltage and calcium signals and extend the duration of voltage recordings.
Article
Biology
Isabel I. C. Low, Lisa M. Giocomo, Alex H. Williams
Summary: Researchers found that neurons in navigational brain regions can change their firing patterns in response to changing contextual factors while preserving local computations. By training neural network models to track position and report transiently-cued context changes in simple environments, they showed that the activity patterns are similar to population-wide remapping in the navigational brain region. Furthermore, the models' solution generalizes to more complex navigation and inference tasks.