This Week in Neuroscience – Details, episodes & analysis

TWiN explores how pregnancy leads to modifications in brain structure and function that may prepare the mother for parenting.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, and Vivianne Morrison

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Pregnancy transforms the brain (Nature)
• Hormone-mediated neural remodeling during pregnancy (Science)
• Effects of pregnancy on brain activity (Nature Comm)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

Joseph Paton and Felipe Rodrigues join TWiN to explain how they used temperature manipulation to alter the speed of neuronal dynamics in the dorsal striatum of rats, a manipulation that selectively slowed down or sped up time perception, illuminating the mechanisms of time-based decisions.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, Timothy Cheung, and Vivianne Morrison

Guest: Joseph J. Paton and Felipe Rodrigues

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Using temperature to analyze the neural basis of a time-based decision (Nat Neurosci)
• Hot times for the dorsal striatum (Nat Neurosci)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

TWiN reviews a mouse model of ADHD to characterize hypersensitivity to pain, and that sensitization is further amplified in a pathological inflammatory state.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, and Timothy Cheung

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Pain hypersensitivity in ADHD model (PNAS)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

TWiN discusses a study of on the pathways that control opioid analgesic tolerance, a root cause of opioid overdose and misuse, which can develop through an associative learning.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, and Timothy Cheung

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Associative opioid analgesic tolerance (Sci Adv)
• Pavlovian-conditioned opioid tolerance (Sci Adv)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

TWiN explains how psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA, which are being explored for treating a wide range of neuropsychiatric diseases, reopen the social reward period for critical learning.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, and Timothy Cheung

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Download TWiN 042 (34 MB .mp3, 57 min)
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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Psychedelic drugs open critical period (Nature)
• Psychedelics reopen critical periods (News-Med)
• LSD microdosing doesn’t work (U Chicago Med)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

Vivianne explains how early in Alzheimer’s disease, the brain attempts to counteract the increased excitatory drive caused by amyloid deposition, and that melanin-concentrating hormone, produced during sleep, is involved in this protective response.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, Timothy Cheung, and Vivianne Morrison

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Melanin-concentrating hormone and Alzheimer’s disease (Nat Neurosci)
• Alzforum
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

Tim takes TWiN through two studies on the role of dopamine: that syllables are natural units of spontaneous behavior used by the brain to structure action, and that mesolimbic dopamine release conveys causal associations but not reward prediction errors, thereby challenging the dominant theory of reward learning.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, Timothy Cheung, and Vivianne Morrison

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Spontaneous behavior without explicit reward (Nature)
• Dopamine release conveys causal associations (Science)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

Junjie from Jason’s lab joins TWiN to discuss the observation that the cell gene PNMA2 encodes non-enveloped virus-like capsids that induce autoantibodies which underlie paraneoplastic syndrome.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, Timothy Cheung, and Junjie Xu

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Virus-like capsids in paraneoplastic disease (bioRxiv)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

TWiN explains the finding that immunity to commensal bacteria promotes sensory neuron regeneration via the cytokine interleukin-17A.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Ori Lieberman, Timothy Cheung, and Vivianne Morrison

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• MicrobeTV Discord Server
• Immunity to the microbiota promotes sensory neuron regeneration (Cell)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv

TWiN reviews the field of microgial research, which has advanced in recent decades but is constrained by nomenclature that is necessary but often implies specific functions.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jason Shepherd, Timothy Cheung, and Vivianne Morrison

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• Microglia states and nomenclature (Nature)
• Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!

Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Send your neuroscience questions and comments to twin@microbe.tv