Science posts
See science posts on page 50 below.
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- 2014
- Takashi Kitamura et al
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Island Cells Control Temporal Association Memory
- Episodic memory requires associations of temporally discontiguous events. In the entorhinal-hippocampal network, temporal associations are driven by a direct pathway from layer III of the medial entorhinal cortex (MECIII) to the hippocampal CA1 region. However, the identification of neural circuits that regulate this association has remained unknown. In layer II of entorhinal cortex (ECII), we report clusters of excitatory neurons called island cells, which appear in a curvilinear matrix of bulblike structures, directly project to CA1, and activate interneurons that target the distal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. Island cells suppress the excitatory MECIII input through the feed-forward inhibition to control the strength and duration of temporal association in trace fear memory. Together, the two EC inputs compose a control circuit for temporal association memory.
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- 2011
- Junghyup Suh et al
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Entorhinal Cortex Layer III Input to the Hippocampus Is Crucial for Temporal Association Memory
- Associating temporally discontinuous elements is crucial for the formation of episodic and working memories that depend on the hippocampal-entorhinal network. However, the neural circuits subserving these associations have remained unknown. The layer III inputs of the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampus may contribute to this process. To test this hypothesis, we generated a transgenic mouse in which these inputs are specifically inhibited. The mutant mice displayed significant impairments in spatial working-memory tasks and in the encoding phase of trace fear-conditioning. These results indicate a critical role of the entorhinal cortex layer III inputs to the hippocampus in temporal association memory.
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- 2014
- Peter J. Hellyer et al
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The Control of Global Brain Dynamics: Opposing Actions of Frontoparietal Control and Default Mode Networks on Attention
- Understanding how dynamic changes in brain activity control behavior is a major challenge of cognitive neuroscience. Here, we consider the brain as a complex dynamic system and define two measures of brain dynamics: the synchrony of brain activity, measured by the spatial coherence of the BOLD signal across regions of the brain; and metastability, which we define as the extent to which synchrony varies over time. We investigate the relationship among brain network activity, metastability, and cognitive state in humans, testing the hypothesis that global metastability is “tuned” by network interactions. We study the following two conditions: (1) an attentionally demanding choice reaction time task (CRT); and (2) an unconstrained “rest” state. Functional MRI demonstrated increased synchrony, and decreased metastability was associated with increased activity within the frontoparietal control/dorsal attention network (FPCN/DAN) activity and decreased default mode network (DMN) activity d..
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- 2010
- Xiao-Jing Wang
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Neurophysiological and Computational Principles of Cortical Rhythms in Cognition
- Synchronous rhythms represent a core mechanism for sculpting temporal coordination of neural activity in the brain-wide network. This review focuses on oscillations in the cerebral cortex that occur during cognition, in alert behaving conditions. Over the last two decades, experimental and modeling work has made great strides in elucidating the detailed cellular and circuit basis of these rhythms, particularly gamma and theta rhythms. The underlying physiological mechanisms are diverse (ranging from resonance and pacemaker properties of single cells to multiple scenarios for population synchronization and wave propagation), but also exhibit unifying principles. A major conceptual advance was the realization that synaptic inhibition plays a fundamental role in rhythmogenesis, either in an interneuronal network or in a reciprocal excitatory-inhibitory loop. Computational functions of synchronous oscillations in cognition are still a matter of debate among systems neuroscientists, in pa..
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- 2012
- Conrado A. Bosman et al
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Attentional stimulus selection through selective synchronization between monkey visual areas
- A central motif in neuronal networks is convergence, linking several input neurons to one target neuron. In visual cortex, convergence renders target neurons responsive to complex stimuli. Yet, convergence typically sends multiple stimuli to a target, and the behaviorally relevant stimulus must be selected. We used two stimuli, activating separate electrocorticographic V1 sites, and both activating an electrocorticographic V4 site equally strongly. When one of those stimuli activated one V1 site, it gamma synchronized (60–80 Hz) to V4. When the two stimuli activated two V1 sites, primarily the relevant one gamma synchronized to V4. Frequency bands of gamma activities showed substantial overlap containing the band of interareal coherence. The relevant V1 site had its gamma peak frequency 2–3 Hz higher than the irrelevant V1 site and 4–6 Hz higher than V4. Gamma-mediated interareal influences were predominantly directed from V1 to V4. We propose that selective synchronization renders r..
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- 2009
- Georgia G. Gregoriou et al
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High-Frequency, Long-Range Coupling Between Prefrontal and Visual Cortex During Attention
- Electrical recordings in humans and monkeys show attentional enhancement of evoked responses and gamma synchrony in ventral stream cortical areas. Does this synchrony result from intrinsic activity in visual cortex or from inputs from other structures? Using paired recordings in the frontal eye field (FEF) and area V4, we found that attention to a stimulus in their joint receptive field leads to enhanced oscillatory coupling between the two areas, particularly at gamma frequencies. This coupling appeared to be initiated by FEF and was time-shifted by about 8 to 13 milliseconds across a range of frequencies. Considering the expected conduction and synaptic delays between the areas, this time-shifted coupling at gamma frequencies may optimize the postsynaptic impact of spikes from one area upon the other, improving cross-area communication with attention.
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- 2013
- Lorena Chanes et al
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Causal Frequency-Specific Contributions of Frontal Spatiotemporal Patterns Induced by Non-Invasive Neurostimulation to Human Visual Performance
- Neural oscillatory activity is known to play a crucial role in brain function. In the particular domain of visual perception, specific frequency bands in different brain regions and networks, from sensory areas to large-scale frontoparietal systems, have been associated with distinct aspects of visual behavior. Nonetheless, their contributions to human visual cognition remain to be causally demonstrated. We hereby used non-uniform (and thus non-frequency-specific) and uniform (frequency-specific) high-beta and gamma patterns of noninvasive neurostimulation over the right frontal eye field (FEF) to isolate the behavioral effects of oscillation frequency and provide causal evidence that distinct visual behavioral outcomes could be modulated by frequency-specific activity emerging from a single cortical region. In a visual detection task using near-threshold targets, high-beta frequency enhanced perceptual sensitivity (d′) without changing response criterion (beta), whereas gamma freque..
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- 2013
- Kalina Christoff et al
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The frontopolar cortex and human cognition
- Numerous brain lesion and functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that the dorsolateral and frontopolar prefrontal regions are involved in complex cognitive processes subserving thought and memory. However, previously proposed functional subdivisions of prefrontal function have concentrated predominantly on posterior prefrontal cortex, including the dorsolateral, ventral, and medial regions. Far less consideration has been given to characterizing the psychological processes mediated by the frontopolar cortex. Here we review published neuroimaging studies of reasoning and episodic memory, two domains in which the frontopolar cortex has been frequently activated. The results suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is involved when externally generated information is being evaluated, whereas the frontopolar cortex becomes recruited when internally generated information needs to be evaluated. A hierarchical model of prefrontal function is proposed in which dorsolateral and fro..
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- 2013
- Sung-il Kim
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Neuroscientific Model of Motivational Process
- Considering the neuroscientific findings on reward, learning, value, decision-making, and cognitive control, motivation can be parsed into three sub processes, a process of generating motivation, a process of maintaining motivation, and a process of regulating motivation. I propose a tentative neuroscientific model of motivational processes which consists of three distinct but continuous sub processes, namely reward-driven approach, value-based decision-making, and goal-directed control. Reward-driven approach is the process in which motivation is generated by reward anticipation and selective approach behaviors toward reward. This process recruits the ventral striatum (reward area) in which basic stimulus-action association is formed, and is classified as an automatic motivation to which relatively less attention is assigned. By contrast, value-based decision-making is the process of evaluating various outcomes of actions, learning through positive prediction error, and calculating ..
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- 2011
- R. Nathan Spreng et al
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Default network activity, coupled with the frontoparietal control network, supports goal-directed cognition
- Tasks that demand externalized attention reliably suppress default network activity while activating the dorsal attention network. These networks have an intrinsic competitive relationship; activation of one suppresses activity of the other. Consequently, many assume that default network activity is suppressed during goal-directed cognition. We challenge this assumption in an fMRI study of planning. Recent studies link default network activity with internally focused cognition, such as imagining personal future events, suggesting a role in autobiographical planning. However, it is unclear how goal-directed cognition with an internal focus is mediated by these opposing networks. A third anatomically interposed ‘frontoparietal control network’ might mediate planning across domains, flexibly coupling with either the default or dorsal attention network in support of internally versus externally focused goal-directed cognition, respectively. We tested this hypothesis by comparing brain ac..
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