neuroscience review

Neuroinflammation accompanies several brain disorders, either as a secondary consequence or as a primary cause and may contribute importantly to disease pathogenesis. Neurosteroids which act as Positive Steroid Allosteric GABA-A receptor Modulators (Steroid-PAM) appear to modulate neuroinflammation and their levels in the brain may vary because of increased or decreased local production or import from the systemic circulation. The increased synthesis of steroid-PAMs is possibly due to increased expression of the mitochondrial cholesterol transporting protein (TSPO) in neuroinflammatory tissue, and reduced production may be due to changes in the enzymatic activity...

The intricate network of the brain's neurons and synapses poses unparalleled challenges for research, distinct from other biological studies. This is particularly true when dissecting how neurons and their functional units work at a cell biological level. While traditional microscopy has been foundational, it was unable to reveal the deeper complexities of neural interactions. However, an imaging renaissance has transformed our capabilities. Advancements in light and electron microscopy, combined with correlative imaging, now achieve unprecedented resolutions, uncovering the most nuanced neural structures...

Reading proficiency is crucial for academic, vocational, and economic success and has been closely linked to health outcomes. Unfortunately, in the United States, a concerning 63% of fourth-grade children are reading below grade level, with approximately 7%-10% exhibiting a disability in word reading, developmental dyslexia. Research in developmental cognitive neuroscience indicates that individuals with dyslexia show functional and structural brain alterations in regions processing reading and reading-related information, with some of these differences emerging as early as preschool and even infancy...

BACKGROUND: Panic disorder is a common and important disease in clinical practice that decreases individual productivity and increases health care use. Treatments comprise medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. However, adverse medication effects and poor treatment compliance mean new therapeutic models are needed. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that digital therapy for panic disorder may improve panic disorder symptoms and that treatment response would be associated with brain activity changes assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)...

In this article, we, for the first time, provide a comprehensive overview and unified framework of the impact of poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES) on the brain and behaviour. While there are many studies on the impact of low SES on the brain (including cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and even neurotransmitters) and behaviours (including educational attainment, language development, development of psychopathological disorders), prior studies did not integrate behavioural, educational, and neural findings in one framework...

Forty-five years have passed since the first publication of the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential (ERP) component. The first 10 years of research hardly gained any particular attention of the scientific community interested in acoustic perception. Debates on the nature of sensation versus perception were going on, and the technical possibilities to record ERPs, called in general evoked potentials, were very limited. Subtle changes in pure tone frequency or intensity giving rise to the MMN component were first investigated in humans...

Annually, more than 15 million people worldwide suffer from stroke, a condition linked to high mortality and disability rates. This disease significantly affects daily life, impairing everyday functioning, executive function, and cognition. Moreover, stroke severely restricts patients' ability to perform daily activities, diminishing their overall quality of life. Recent scientific studies have identified cuproptosis, a newly discovered form of cell death, as a key factor in stroke development. However, the role of cuproptosis in stroke remains unclear to researchers...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) modulates local and widespread connectivity in dysfunctional networks. Positive results are observed in several patient populations; however, the precise mechanisms underlying treatment remain unknown. Translational DBS studies aim to answer these questions and provide knowledge for advancing the field. Here, we systematically review the literature on DBS studies involving models of neurological, developmental and neuropsychiatric disorders to provide a synthesis of the current scientific landscape surrounding this topic...

Most patients with late-onset neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's have a complex aetiology resulting from numerous genetic risk variants of small effects located across the genome, environmental factors, and the interaction between genes and environment. Over the last decade, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and post-GWAS analyses have shed light on the polygenic architecture of these diseases, enabling polygenic risk scores (PRS) to estimate an individual's relative genetic liability for presenting with the disease...

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder affecting both children and adolescents. Individuals with ADHD experience heterogeneous problems, such as difficulty in attention, behavioral hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Recent studies have shown that complex genetic factors play a role in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders. Animal models with clear hereditary traits are crucial for studying the molecular, biological, and brain circuit mechanisms underlying ADHD. Owing to their well-managed genetic origins and the relative simplicity with which the function of neuronal circuits is clearly established, models of mice can help learn the mechanisms involved in ADHD...

The mouse visual system has become the most popular model to study the cellular and circuit mechanisms of sensory processing. However, the importance of eye movements only started to be appreciated recently. Eye movements provide a basis for predictive sensing and deliver insights into various brain functions and dysfunctions. A plethora of knowledge on the central control of eye movements and their role in perception and behaviour arose from work on primates. However, an overview of various eye movements in mice and a comparison to primates is missing...

BACKGROUND: Patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD) who receive either asleep image-guided subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (DBS) or the traditional awake technique have comparable motor outcomes. However, there are fewer studies regarding which technique should be chosen for globus pallidus internus (GPi) DBS. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to compare the accuracy of lead placement and motor outcomes of asleep versus awake GPi DBS PD population. METHODS: We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane for studies comparing asleep vs...

Central sensitization (CS) involves an amplification of neural processing within the central nervous system that can result in widespread pain patterns and hypersensitivity to stimuli. The Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) and various quantitative sensory testing (QST) methods purport to assess clinical markers of CS. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize and quantify the associations between total CSI scores and QST measures from previous studies. A systematic search identified 39 unique studies that were deemed eligible for the systematic review and 33 studies for meta-analyses (with 3314 subjects and 154 effect sizes), including five QST modalities: conditioned pain modulation, temporal summation, pressure pain threshold, heat pain threshold, and cold pain threshold...

Ant physiology has been fashioned by 100 million years of social evolution. Ants perform many sophisticated social and collective behaviors yet possess nervous systems similar in schematic and scale to that of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster , a popular solitary model organism. Ants are thus attractive complementary subjects to investigate adaptations pertaining to complex social behaviors that are absent in flies. Despite research interest in ant behavior and the neurobiological foundations of sociality more broadly, our understanding of the ant nervous system is incomplete...

Parkinson's disease (PD) has been linked to a vast array of vitamins among which vitamin B12 (Vit B12) is the most relevant and often investigated specially in the context of intrajejunal levodopa infusion therapy. Vit B12 deficiency, itself, has been reported to cause acute parkinsonism. Nevertheless, concrete mechanisms through which B12 deficiency interacts with PD in terms of pathophysiology, clinical manifestation and progression remains unclear. Recent studies have suggested that Vit B12 deficiency along with the induced hyperhomocysteinemia are correlated with specific PD phenotypes characterized with early postural instability and falls and more rapid motor progression, cognitive impairment, visual hallucinations and autonomic dysfunction...

The vestibular system plays an important role in maintaining balance and posture. It also contributes to vertical perception, body awareness and spatial navigation. In addition to its sensory function, the vestibular system has direct connections to key areas responsible for higher cognitive functions, such as the prefrontal cortex, insula and hippocampus. Several studies have reported that vestibular dysfunction, in particular bilateral vestibulopathy, is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment and the development of dementias such as Alzheimer's disease...

Animals often behave repetitively and predictably. These repetitive behaviors can have a component that is learned and ingrained as habits, which can be evolutionarily advantageous as they reduce cognitive load and the expenditure of attentional resources. Repetitive behaviors can also be conscious and deliberate, and may occur in the absence of habit formation, typically when they are a feature of normal development in children, or neuropsychiatric disorders. They can be considered pathological when they interfere with social relationships and daily activities...

Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by the preferential dysfunction and death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. The onset and progression of PD is influenced by a diversity of genetic variants, many of which lack functional characterization. To identify the most high-yield targets for therapeutic intervention, it is important to consider the core cellular compartments and functional pathways upon which the varied forms of pathogenic dysfunction may converge. Here, we review several key PD-linked proteins and pathways, focusing on the mechanisms of their potential convergence in disease pathogenesis...

Understanding how social and affective behavioral states are controlled by neural circuits is a fundamental challenge in neurobiology. Despite increasing understanding of central circuits governing prosocial and agonistic interactions, how bodily autonomic processes regulate these behaviors is less resolved. Thermoregulation is vital for maintaining homeostasis, but also associated with cognitive, physical, affective, and behavioral states. Here, we posit that adjusting body temperature may be integral to the appropriate expression of social behavior and argue that understanding neural links between behavior and thermoregulation is timely...

The effectiveness of universal preventive approaches in reducing the incidence of affective/psychotic disorders is unclear. We therefore aimed to synthesise the available evidence from randomised controlled trials. For studies reporting change in prevalence, we simulated all possible scenarios for the proportion of individuals with the disorder at baseline and at follow-up to exclude them. We then combined these data with studies directly measuring incidence and conducted random effects meta-analysis with relative risk (RR) to estimate the incidence in the intervention group compared to the control group...