Publications related to Behavioral Genetics Laboratory

Adolescent Stress-Induced Ventral Hippocampus Redox Dysregulation Underlies Behavioral Deficits and Excitatory/Inhibitory Imbalance Related to Schizophrenia

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Dogukan Hazar Ülgen, Thamyris Silva

Background and hypothesis: Redox dysregulation has been proposed as a convergent point of childhood trauma and the emergence of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia (SCZ). A critical region particularly vulnerable to environmental insults during ad ...

2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alireza Modirshanechi

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

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

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

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

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

Neurocognition and NMDAR co-agonists pathways in individuals with treatment resistant first-episode psychosis: a 3-year follow-up longitudinal study

Lijing Xin, Kim Do

This study aims to determine whether 1) individuals with treatment-resistant schizophrenia display early cognitive impairment compared to treatment-responders and healthy controls and 2) N-methyl-D-aspartate-receptor hypofunction is an underlying mechanism ...

Springernature2024

Subcortical correlates of consciousness with human single neuron recordings

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

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

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

Thalamic contributions to psychosis susceptibility: Evidence from co-activation patterns accounting for intra-seed spatial variability (μCAPs)

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Thomas William Arthur Bolton, Farnaz Delavari, Nada Kojovic

The temporal variability of the thalamus in functional networks may provide valuable insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. To address the complexity of the role of the thalamic nuclei in psychosis, we introduced micro-co-activation patterns ( ...

Wiley2024

Impact of a mindfulness-based intervention on neurobehavioral functioning and its association with large-scale brain networks in preterm young adolescents

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Vanessa Siffredi, Natalia Fernandez, Petra Susan Hüppi

Aim: Adolescents born very preterm (VPT;

Wiley2024

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

A bistable inhibitory optoGPCR for multiplexed optogenetic control of neural circuits

Mauro Pulin

Information is transmitted between brain regions through the release of neurotransmitters from long-range projecting axons. Understanding how the activity of such long-range connections contributes to behavior requires efficient methods for reversibly mani ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Unveiling the complexity of learning and decision-making

Wei-Hsiang Lin

Reinforcement learning (RL) is crucial for learning to adapt to new environments. In RL, the prediction error is an important component that compares the expected and actual rewards. Dopamine plays a critical role in encoding these prediction errors. In my ...

EPFL2024

Functional MRI Neurofeedback Outperforms Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Reducing Tinnitus Distress: A Prospective Randomized Clinical Trial

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Nicolas Gninenko

Background: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the current standard treatment for chronic severe tinnitus; however, preliminary evidence suggests that real-time functional MRI (fMRI) neurofeedback therapy may be more effective. Purpose: To compare the e ...

Radiological Soc North America (Rsna)2024

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

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

Multimodal transcriptomic atlases of mouse spinal cord injury

Matthieu Pierre Gautier

A spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers a cascade of molecular and cellular responses involving inflammatory cell infiltration and cytokine release, apoptosis, demyelination, excitotoxicity, ischemia, and the formation of a fibrotic scar surrounded by an astro ...

EPFL2024