Neural circuitry

The study of animal locomotion and neuromechanical control offers valuable insights for advancing research in neuroscience, biomechanics, and robotics. We have developed FARMS (Framework for Animal and Robot Modeling and Simulation), an open-source, interdisciplinary framework, designed to facilitate access to neuromechanical simulations for modeling, simulation, and analysis of animal locomotion and bio-inspired robotic systems. By providing an accessible and user-friendly platform, FARMS aims to lower the barriers for researchers to explore the complex interactions between the nervous system

Depression is a neuropsychiatric condition affecting 5% of the population and involving loss of interest, low mood, and anhedonia. Depression has been ranked as the third cause of the burden of disease worldwide in 2008 by the World Health Organization WHO. Depression molecular etiology is complex and still not fully understood. Common limitations of gold standard small molecule drugs include poor efficacy, off target side effects and difficult druggability of many targets. In this study we report a radically different approach deploying small engineered single domain antibodies (nanobody) tar

…Indeed, detailed knowledge of the neural circuitry modulating fear memory could be the turning point for the comprehension of this emotion and its pathological states. A comprehensive understanding of the circuits mediating memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval presents the fundamental technological challenge of analyzing activity in the entire brain with single-neuron resolution. In this context, we develop the brain-wide neuron quantification toolkit (BRANT) for mapping whole-brain neuronal activati

The structure of neural circuitry plays a crucial role in brain function. Previous studies of brain organization generally had to trade off between coarse descriptions at a large scale and fine descriptions on a small scale. Researchers have now reconstructed tens to hundreds of thousands of neurons at synaptic resolution, enabling investigations into the interplay between global, modular organization, and cell type-specific wiring. Analyzing data of this scale, however, presents unique challenges. To address this problem we applied novel community detection methods to analyze the synapse-leve

The organization of neural circuitry plays a role in brain function. Investigations into this organization have generally had to trade off between coarse descriptions at a large scale and fine descriptions on a very small scale, due to the constraints of the tools and data processing methods available. Recently, reconstructions of tens to hundreds of thousands of neurons at synaptic resolution have been published, enabling investigations into the interplay between global, modular organization, and cell type-specific wiring. Analysis of these enormous data sets requires the development of new m

…Thus, reflex neural circuits maintain parameters of immunological physiology within a narrow range optimal for health. Advances in neuroscience and immunology using optogenetics, pharm

…questions in neuroscience concerns the neural computations that underlie these probabilistic sensorimotor processing. Through a recurrent neural network (RNN) model and human psychophysics and electroencephalography (EEG), the present study investigates circuit mechanisms for processing probabilistic structures of sensory signals to guide behavior. We first constructe

…neurons, our understanding of the neural basis of sexual and social behavior has expanded substantially. I will discuss

…established “textbook” elements of neural circuitry, but in both cases their functional role has not been well established. Here I will present some new observations on the function of recurrent inhibition in the spinal-cord, supporting the idea that this connection frequency tunes transmission of inputs through motoneurons. Secondly, I will

Autobiographical memories are the ghosts of our past. Through them we visit places long departed, see faces once familiar, and hear voices now silent. These, often decades-old, personal experiences can be recalled on a whim or come unbidden into our everyday consciousness. Autobiographical memories are crucial to cognition because they facilitate almost everything we do, endow us with a sense of self and underwrite our capacity for autonomy. They are often compromised by common neurological and psychiatric pathologies with devastating effects. Despite autobiographical memories being central t

…to exploit our knowledge of neural circuitry and function to restore or even enhance vision. However, although existing devices demonstrate proof of principle in treating incurable blindness, they produce limited visual function. Some of the reasons for this can be understood based on the precise and specific neural circuitry that mediates visual signaling in the retina. Consideration of this circuitry suggests that future devices may need to operate at single-cell, sing