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Category: neuroscience – Page 111

Parallel activity in orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus shapes cognitive maps and schemas, study suggests

As humans and other animals navigate their surroundings and experience different things, their brain creates so-called cognitive maps, which are internal representations of environments or tasks. These mental maps are eventually generalized into schemas, frameworks that organize information acquired through experience and can later guide decision-making.

Various past neuroscience and psychology studies have tried to better understand the neural processes and brain regions that support the formation of these internal representations. Insight into these mechanisms could, in turn, shed light on the underpinnings of learning and decision-making.

Two brain regions that have been found to play a role in forming internal representations of experiences are the (OFC) and the hippocampus (HC). Among other functions, the OFC supports reward-based learning and decision-making. At the same time, the HC contributes to spatial navigation and the formation and retrieval of memories.

Noninvasive Sound Wave Therapy Eases Depression and Anxiety

In the double-blind study, 29 patients with various mood and anxiety disorders received MRI-guided focused ultrasound to the left amygdala.

The results showed both immediate reductions in amygdala activity, and after three weeks of daily sessions, patients experienced clinically significant improvements in negative affect and symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD.

Say goodbye to everything we knew about our brain: scientists discover how it creates, stores and retrieves memories

Everything related to the human brain and neuroscience has always been an area in which specialists have said that there is much to discover, learn and investigate. In fact, the generation of memory in human beings, memories, and the different diseases that are clustered around the CPU of the body have always been constantly evolving.

Now, Dr. Tomas Ryan of Trinity College Dublin, a neuroscientist who has explored the issues of brain learning by tracking the cells involved in this process, has found new findings suggesting that memory formation depends on the connections between groups of engram cells, neurons thought to capture and store distinct experiences.

In this new research, the experts indicate that each experience leaves a pattern of neuronal activation that can be activated later, which would mean the creation of a memory. To reach this conclusion, the neuroscientists tracked two sets of engram cells, each linked to a different memory.

Discovery that microglia can be effectively replaced could transform cell therapy for brain diseases

An international research team led by Professor Kiavash Movahedi from the Brussels Center for Immunology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has published unexpected results in the journal Immunity. Their study sheds new light on the possibility of effectively replacing defective microglia—the brain’s immune cells—marking a potential breakthrough in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Microglia are essential for healthy brain function. Defective are increasingly linked to the development of neurodegenerative disorders.

“Microglia are unique,” says Prof. Movahedi. “They originate early in and maintain themselves throughout life without being replaced by new cells from the blood. That makes them special, but also vulnerable.”

Adaptive Whole-Brain Dynamics Predictive Method: Relevancy to Mental Disorders

The Hopf whole-brain model, based on structural connectivity, overcomes limitations of traditional structural or functional connectivity-focused methods by incorporating heterogeneity parameters, quantifying dynamic brain characteristics in healthy and diseased states. Traditional parameter fitting techniques lack precision, restricting broader use. To address this, we validated parameter fitting methods using simulated networks and synthetic models, introducing improvements such as individual-specific initialization and optimized gradient descent, which reduced individual data loss. We also developed an approximate loss function and gradient adjustment mechanism, enhancing parameter fitting accuracy and stability.

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