Publications related to Disruption of the expression of the proprotein convertase PC7 reduces BDNF production and affects learning and memory in mice

Seeking the new, learning from the unexpected: Computational models of surprise and novelty in the brain

Human babies have a natural desire to interact with new toys and objects, through which they learn how the world around them works, e.g., that glass shatters when dropped, but a rubber ball does not. When their predictions are proven incorrect, such as whe ...

EPFL2024

Neurobiological and metabolic basis of motivation and effort-based decision-making - A human 1H-MRS, fMRI and machine learning study

Arthur Barakat

Motivation is a multifaceted phenomenon that we explore within the framework of decision-making. Through this cognitive process, actions are directed towards specific goals by performing a trade-off between the cost and benefit of an action. The dorsomedia ...

EPFL2024

White adipose tissue distribution and amount are associated with increased white matter connectivity

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Elda Fischi Gomez, Gabriel Girard, Philipp Johannes Koch, Liana Okudzhava

Obesity represents a significant public health concern and is linked to various comorbidities and cognitive impairments. Previous research indicates that elevated body mass index (BMI) is associated with structural changes in white matter (WM). However, a ...

Wiley2024

The interplay between white adipose tissue, adipokines, and structural gray matter changes

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Elda Fischi Gomez, Gabriel Girard, Liana Okudzhava

The growing global obesity issue emphasizes the importance of understanding its health implications. Previous research has identified consistent alterations in gray matter (GM) volume in connection with obesity. Given the various implications of distinct f ...

Wiley2024

Parental status and markers of brain and cellular age: A 3D convolutional network and classification study

Donal Patrick Hill

Recent research shows prominent effects of pregnancy and the parenthood transition on structural brain characteristics in humans. Here, we present a comprehensive study of how parental status and number of children born/fathered links to markers of brain a ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Unraveling behavior and cortical signals to guide the development of soft neuroprostheses for auditory restoration and spreading depolarization

Emilie Cornelia Maria Revol

Neuroprostheses have been used clinically for decades, to help restore or preserve brain functions, when pharmaceutical treatments are inefficient. Although great progress in the field has been made over the years to interface with the nervous system, surf ...

EPFL2024

Single-cell epigenomic reconstruction of developmental trajectories from pluripotency in human neural organoid systems

Fides Zenk

Cell fate progression of pluripotent progenitors is strictly regulated, resulting in high human cell diversity. Epigenetic modifications also orchestrate cell fate restriction. Unveiling the epigenetic mechanisms underlying human cell diversity has been di ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Involvement of prelimbic cortex neurons and related circuits in the acquisition of a cooperative learning by pairs of rats

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Elias Georges Gebara, Ana del Rocio Conde Moro

Social behaviors such as cooperation are crucial for mammals. A deeper knowledge of the neuronal mechanisms underlying cooperation can be beneficial for people suffering from pathologies with impaired social behavior. Our aim was to study the brain activit ...

Springer2024

Subcortical correlates of consciousness with human single neuron recordings

Michael Eric Anthony Pereira, Olaf Blanke, Nathan Quentin Faivre, Fosco Bernasconi

Subcortical brain structures such as the basal ganglia or the thalamus are involved in regulating motor and cognitive behavior. However, their contribution to perceptual consciousness is still unclear, due to the inherent difficulties of recording subcorti ...

2024

Safety, tolerability and blinding efficiency of non-invasive deep transcranial temporal interference stimulation: first experience from more than 250 sessions

Elena Beanato, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Maximilian Jonas Wessel, Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis, Fabienne Windel, Emma Marie D Stiennon

Objective. Selective neuromodulation of deep brain regions has for a long time only been possible through invasive approaches, because of the steep depth-focality trade-off of conventional non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques. Approach. An appr ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models

Martin Schrimpf

Transformer models such as GPT generate human-like language and are predictive of human brain responses to language. Here, using functional-MRI-measured brain responses to 1,000 diverse sentences, we first show that a GPT-based encoding model can predict t ...

Nature Portfolio2024

An immersive virtual reality tool for assessing left and right unilateral spatial neglect

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

The reported rate of the occurrence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is highly variable likely due to the lack of validity and low sensitivity of classical tools used to assess it. Virtual reality (VR) assessments try to overcome these limitations by pr ...

Wiley2024

Non-invasive stimulation of the human striatum disrupts reinforcement learning of motor skills

Elena Beanato, Esra Neufeld, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maximilian Jonas Wessel, Traian Popa, Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis, Julie Duqué, Fabienne Windel

Reinforcement feedback can improve motor learning, but the underlying brain mechanisms remain underexplored. In particular, the causal contribution of specific patterns of oscillatory activity within the human striatum is unknown. To address this question, ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Ethological computational psychiatry: Challenges and opportunities

Mackenzie Mathis

Studying the intricacies of individual subjects' moods and cognitive processing over extended periods of time presents a formidable challenge in medicine. While much of systems neuroscience appropriately focuses on the link between neural circuit functions ...

Current Biology Ltd2024

Small-scale robotic devices for medical interventions in the brain

Lorenzo Francesco John Noseda, Mahmut Selman Sakar

This article summarizes the recent advancements in the design, fabrication, and control of microrobotic devices for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders. With a focus on diverse actuation methods, we discuss how advancements in materials science ...

2024

Computational models of intrinsic motivation for curiosity and creativity

Wulfram Gerstner, Alireza Modirshanechi, Sophia Becker

We link Ivancovsky et al.'s novelty-seeking model (NSM) to computational models of intrinsically motivated behavior and learning. We argue that dissociating different forms of curiosity, creativity, and memory based on the involvement of distinct intrinsic ...

2024

Integrated Wireless Power, Data Communication, and Thermal Sensing System for Autonomous Multisite Brain Implants

Implanted medical devices (IMDs) have been widely developed to support the monitoring and recording of biological data inside the body or brain. Wirelessly powered IMDs, a subset of implantable electronics, have been proposed to eliminate the limitations r ...

EPFL2024

Engram cell connectivity as a mechanism for information encoding and memory function

Maurizio Ferdinando Pezzoli

Information derived from experiences is incorporated into the brain as changes to ensembles of cells, termed engram cells, which allow memory storage and recall. The mechanism by which those changes hold specific information is unclear. Here, we test the h ...

Cell Press2023

Noninvasive deep brain stimulation to modulate human behavior by means of transcranial temporal interference electrical stimulation

Elena Beanato

All functions we use in our everyday life depend on a complex interplay between both cortical and subcortical brain areas, communicating in between each others. When a region is affected by either an accident, aging or neurodegenerative diseases, the whole ...

EPFL2023

Behavioral outcome of very preterm children at 5 years of age: Prognostic utility of brain tissue volumes at term-equivalent-age, perinatal, and environmental factors

Djalel Eddine Meskaldji, Laura Ioana Gui, Serafeim Loukas

ObjectivePrematurity is associated with a high risk of long-term behavioral problems. This study aimed to assess the prognostic utility of volumetric brain data at term-equivalent-age (TEA), clinical perinatal factors, and parental social economic risk in ...

WILEY2023