Category Archives: Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Researchers aim to understand COVID-19 in children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities – URMC

Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester are working to better understand how COVID-19 impacts student and staff in schools that serve students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The $4 million project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP), will allow researchers to work with students and staff at the Mary Cariola Center School in Rochester, to study how COVID-19 spreads in the vulnerable population the agency serves.

Understanding how to best test this population and how COVID spreads in group settings is imperative to keeping those with an IDD safe, John Foxe, Ph.D., Director of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, and co-principal investigator of the study. Ultimately, this study will have major implications for schools across the United States and specifically for schools that serve vulnerable students. This funding continues a well-establish collaboration with Mary Cariola Center and will help keep their population, many of which are too young to be vaccinated, safe from COVID.

John Foxe, Ph.D., announces study at Mary Cariola Center during press conference.

Foxe is one of three principal investigators leading this study. Martin Zand, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of Clinical & Translational Science Institute and Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research at the Medical Center, and Stephen Dewhurst, Ph.D., Vice Dean for Research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, are also principal investigators.

According to the NIH, a non-vaccinated person with intellectual and developmental disabilities is four-times more likely to contract COVID-19 and eight-times more likely to die from the virus than someone without an IDD. It is also a population that is difficult to test with effective procedures. This study will allow researchers to rapidly identify initial infections, antigen levels, and through isolating and contact-tracing, stop the spread of infection in school settings.

COVID-19 poses a considerable threat to our students who have intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as medical complexities, said Karen Zandi, LCSW-R, President/CEO of Mary Cariola Center. This partnership will provide crucial insight into this deadly virus and will allow us to update, revise, and create best practices beyond what we are currently doing. Ultimately, it means we will be able to keep our students and staff healthy and provide peace-of-mind to their families, while providing important research data to help schools in general and other schools like ours.

Individuals living with intellectual developmental disabilities remain disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we cannot leave them behind as we build toward our recovery, said Rep. Joe Morelle. With this study, we will be able to better combat the virus and deliver the outcomes IDD individuals across our nation and their families deserve. Thank you to the Mary Cariola Center and the University of Rochester for the incredible work you have already completed in this space and will continue to do to uplift our entire community.

In addition to researchers testing on all three Mary Cariola School campuses, they will also utilize a dedicated vehicle to travel between the school and students' homes to test and track anyone who tests positive.

Last spring, the NIH designated the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience as one of 16 Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers in the county.

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Researchers aim to understand COVID-19 in children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities - URMC

Neuroscience

$12.2 million to fund new Conte Center to study neurosteroids Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis – Washington University School of…

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Complements efforts of Taylor Family Institute to develop treatments for psychiatric illness

Steven Mennerick, PhD, works in his laboratory, where he studies neurosteroids and their potential as antidepressants. The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis a $12.2 million grant to create a center aimed at advancing research into neurosteroids as treatments for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis a five-year, $12.2 million grant to create a center aimed at advancing research into neurosteroids as treatments for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The new Silvio O. Conte Center for Basic Neuroscience Research will be one of only 15 Conte Centers currently funded by the NIMH, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The centers research focus complements work performed at Washington Universitys Taylor Family Institute for Innovative Psychiatric Research, where scientists have focused since 2013 on the potential of neuroactive steroids to be used to treat psychiatric problems.

Psychiatric illnesses are a major cause of death and disability in the United States and around the world. Research by scientists at the Taylor Family Institute has added to the understanding of changes in the brain that underlie these disorders. Those researchers also have been involved in developing new treatments using neuroactive steroids.

In addition to tapping psychiatrists, neuroscientists, anesthesiologists and chemists at the School of Medicine, the new Conte Center also will involve researchers at Tufts University, Duke University and the University of Colorado. The overall goal is to identify pathways and receptors in the brain that interact with neuroactive steroids. The idea is that those proteins and receptors then might become treatment targets for new psychiatric drugs developed from neurosteroids.

This will be a discovery-based Conte Center, and we hope to leverage our catalogue of synthetic neurosteroids one of the largest in the world to find more effective treatments for depression and other psychiatric problems, said Steven Mennerick, PhD, co-director of the new center and the John P. Feighner Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University. Our center will unite and coordinate the efforts of internationally recognized investigators with expertise in the biology and chemistry of neurosteroids, as well as expertise in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

The center is organized around three main projects. Alex S. Evers, MD, the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor of Anesthesiology, is the principal investigator of a project that aims to identify the cellular proteins targeted by neurosteroids and to characterize the structures of those binding sites.

The second project directed by Mennerick and Charles F. Zorumski, MD, the Samuel B. Guze Professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry will involve testing a prototype antidepressant neurosteroid to help determine what role various types of cellular receptors play as neurosteroids provide antidepressant effects in the brain.

The third project led by Jamie Maguire, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine will test the compounds found most effective in the first two projects in animals that exhibit behaviors similar to what would be diagnosed as clinical depression in a person.

We believe there will be a synergy between our efforts to study and develop new treatments at the Taylor Family Institute and our work at the new Conte Center to identify the receptors and pathways through which neurosteroids exert their effect in the brain, said Zorumski, who is a co-director of the new center and director of the Taylor Family Institute. We want to learn which neurosteroids might be most effective as treatments and which receptors those compounds target.

One neuroactive steroid has had some early success treating depression. In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration approved brexanalone as a treatment for postpartum depression; however, the drug can cause significant sleepiness, and it must be delivered via intravenous infusions. The hope is that new treatments will have fewer side effects and be easier to use.

Our work at the Taylor Family Institute and the new Conte Center reflects the unique partnership weve developed in recent years between anesthesiology and psychiatry, Evers said. The drug ketamine is a perfect example. Its best known as an anesthetic, but we now know it also is useful as an antidepressant. Like ketamine, neurosteroids got their start as anesthetics.

Researchers at the Conte Center will have the opportunity to study the effects of hundreds of synthetic neurosteroids developed by Douglas Covey, PhD, the Andrew C. and Barbara B. Taylor Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry. A medicinal chemist, Covey has created a large catalogue of potential candidate compounds.

This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grant number P50 MH122379

Washington University School of Medicines 1,700 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, consistently ranking among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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$12.2 million to fund new Conte Center to study neurosteroids Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis - Washington University School of...

Neuroscience

Virus-Based Technique Could Enhance Maps of the Brain – Technology Networks

Virginia Tech scientists have improved upon a key method to map the zebrafish brain -- an advance that could improve understanding of how the human brain functions.

A wiring diagram of the brain would be a powerful tool to understand diseases of connectivity, said Yuchin Albert Pan, the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund Eminent Research Scholar in Developmental Neuroscience at theFralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. Autism spectrum disorder, for example, is characterized by a loss of long-distance connections and increase in local connections. Most neuropsychiatric disorders have connectivity aspects.

Although human brains are more complex, zebrafish brains share a common architecture as do all vertebrates. Determining the structure and function of cells called neurons and how they connect within the brain and between the brain and other structures such as the eye could provide clues to more precisely treat neurological diseases and eye injuries.

In a study in todaysFrontiers in Neuroanatomy, the scientists reported an improved, viral-based technique to trace brain connections between neurons in zebrafish using vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which labels cells as it spreads across the synaptic connections between neurons that are functionally wired together.

Until now, the use of viral vectors in zebrafish has been limited because the viruses, such as rabies or adeno-associated virus, often used by scientists to transfer molecules to cells in mammals, are not effective in fish.

To overcome this limitation,Virginia Tech scientiststried and validatedtheuseofVSV to trace connection patterns in neurons in zebrafish. The virus was engineered to label excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are connected via a nanoscopic structure called the synapse.

Before this study, the researchers had been successful with the approach, but the improved, second-generation version of the technique used a mutant version of VSV that was less toxic and longer-lived in the cells, making visualization of the connected neurons and the analysis of that connectivity possible up to five days after infection.

This is really exciting, because now we can not only record activity, but we also know something about the cell types involved, and how they connect, said co-lead author Manxiu Michelle Ma, a neurophysiologist and formerly a postdoctoral research associate in the Pan lab. The unique viral tracer benefits from reducedcytotoxicity, which enables the virus-infectedneurons to maintain their cellular integrity and express a fluorescentindicator to reveal neuronalactivity during visual stimulation. Furthermore, this technique can also define the neuron type,for example, if the neuron during a visual stimulus is an excitatory neuron or an inhibitory neuron.

Stanislav Kler, a virologist and co-lead author of the study who was also a postdoctoral research associate in the lab, said, The connectivity patterns between most neuronal types are mostly unknown. This gap in knowledge underscores the critical need for effective neural circuit mapping tools. This will get us a step closer to understanding how the brain stores and processes information and how we can manipulate these circuits for better health.

The research is especially significant for vision research.

To restore vision after diseases or injury that affect the eye itself including the cells in the eye that project to structures deep within the brain for subsequent processing of the visual world, the eye needs to connect to the right places in the brain, said Pan, who is a member of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institutes Center for Neurobiology Research. The small size and translucency of larval zebrafish are a unique experimental system to investigate whole brain neural circuits. Scientists working on vision regeneration can now look at whether there is functional connectivity.

Reference: Kler S, Ma M, Narayan S, Ahrens MB, Pan YA. Cre-Dependent Anterograde Transsynaptic Labeling and Functional Imaging in Zebrafish Using VSV With Reduced Cytotoxicity. Frontiers in Neuroanatomy. 2021;15:71. doi:10.3389/fnana.2021.758350

This article has been republished from materials provided by Virginia Tech. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Virus-Based Technique Could Enhance Maps of the Brain - Technology Networks

Neuroscience

UK Neuroscience Research Priority Area Brings Diverse Groups Together to Advance Studies – UKNow

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 30, 2021) The University of Kentuckys Neuroscience Research Priority Area (NRPA) supports a "collaborative matrix," bringing together diverse groups of investigators, trainees and research groups from nine different colleges across the University of Kentucky campus.

The key underlying strategy of the NRPA is to provide broad-based support for basic, translational and clinical neuroscience-related research across campus, said NRPA Co-Director Dr. Larry Goldstein, Ruth Louise Works Endowed professor and chairman of UK College of Medicines Department of Neurology. We can uniquely bring together investigators from different laboratories or groups to develop synergies advancing collaborations and supporting trainees, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

The NRPA members collaborate as well as utilize valuable resources within the NRPA, including statistical support and UKs NeuroBank. The NeuroBank, one of the initial NRPA initiatives, collects a variety of biospecimens from subjects being evaluated and treated for neurologic conditions at the UK's Albert B. Chandler Hospital and the Kentucky Neuroscience Institute.

Dr. Tritia Yamasaki,assistant professor of neurology, focuses her research on Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions. As a movement disorder specialist, she sees individuals in clinic with these conditions and shes in charge of UKs NeuroBank.

My role in NeuroBank has allowed me to work with a great group of people to promote research utilizing human samples, Yamasaki said. There is amazing research going on across campus by hundreds of neuroscientists.

Yamasaki meets with investigators to hear about the research they are conducting, and her team then helps figure out how to best support their projects with human samples. Often this involves thinking creatively about how to integrate sample collection into the clinical workflow to obtain the material needed for the research.

She says they do this by approaching patients in the ambulatory clinic and various hospital settings. Additionally, they work with the pathology department, neurosurgeons, the clinical laboratory, and the epilepsy monitoring unit to obtain patient consent and participation.

There are thousands of patients with neurologic diseases being seen by physicians in our hospitals and clinics daily, some with rare types of conditions about which very little is known, or others who are in desperate need of effective therapies to halt neurodegenerative conditions, Yamasaki said.

The NeuroBank leader says being able to combine resources in UKs clinical settings with the vast research community on campus, is an extremely effective way to advance their work in understanding neurological diseases and developing therapies. Animal models are a crucial part of research, but the ultimate test for any discovery about human disease will be whether the same phenomenon is also seen in the human condition, which is much more complex, given the interplay of genetic and environmental influences, said Yamasaki.

Ramon Sun, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience in the UK College of Medicine and works with the Markey Cancer Center, Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) and Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center (SCoBIRC). He is one of the researchers who knows firsthand the value of being a part of the NRPA and having access to resources in the NeuroBank.

The highly collaborative nature of the investigators in the NRPA allows for transdisciplinary, high-impact, cutting-edge research, Sun said. The rich resources of the NRPA that include equipment, banked human specimens, and core services allow for rapid advances in both basic and clinical research in neuroscience.

The collaborative work cultivated within the NRPA recently led Sun and Matthew Gentry, Ph.D., professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry and director of the Lafora Epilepsy Cure Initiative at the UK College of Medicine, to discover that glucose the sugar used for cellular energy production was not the only sugar contained in glycogen in the brain. Brain glycogen also contained another sugar called glucosamine. Thefull study was recently published in Cell Metabolism.

While looking at various components, factors and diseases of the human brain is what most people might think of when they hear neuroscience research, there is much more that plays into the far-reaching category including the Western honey bee.

It is a species with a deep behavioral research history, extensive neuroscience and genomics tools, and it has one of the most sophisticated social lives on the planet, said Clare Rittschof, Ph.D., assistant professor, UK College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment'sDepartment of Entomology.

Rittschofs research is focused on brain metabolic regulation, its links to behavior in the honeybee, and its links to human brain health. She says the NRPA has given her an exciting opportunity to grow a new and unusual area of her research.

Brain metabolic processes are best studied in a medical context as they are associated with neurodegenerative disease and dementia, Rittschof said. However, they are also tied to honeybee aggression, a behavior I have studied for about 10 years.

Thanks to the NRPA, Rittschof has been collaborating with colleagues in the UK College of Medicine, and together they have discovered that honeybee brain metabolism shares many of the features of metabolism in the brains of mammals and humans. However, there also may be key differences that can be leveraged to improve human brain function.

Working at a large research university with a medical college has been invaluable for me, said Rittschof. There are resources, and most importantly, scientists at UK that would not be available on a smaller, less diverse campus. I love working on projects that span discipline boundaries in unusual ways.

Rittschof and others like Josh Morganti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of neuroscience who works with SBCoA and SCoBIRC, also acknowledge the important role the NRPA plays in providing funds for the groundwork of their various research projects that then allows them to seek funding for their ideas from resources such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Morgantis lab recently received a large R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the NIH to examine how inflammatory responses of glia regulate age-related neurodegeneration following traumatic brain injury.

Being a part of the NRPA has allowed a great facilitation for collaboration and collaborative projects, which has helped in terms of funding as well as project completion using cutting-edge approaches across multiple labs, said Morganti.

While Morganti has been collaborating at UK for a few years now, the NRPA also benefits new researchers on campus like Lauren Whitehurst, Ph.D., assistant professor, College of Arts andSciences'Department of Psychology.

The offerings of this office are really invaluable to the development of new faculty members like me, she said.

Whitehurst, who just completed her first year as a faculty member at UK, studies the importance of sleep for our health and well-being, while also trying to understand how stress and sleep interact to affect how we think, learn and remember information. In her first year, she says shes already engaged within the NRPA in multiple ways.

I submitted two pilot grants to support some new research in my lab examining sleeps role in neurodegenerative disease and its impact on memory in trauma-exposed women, Whitehurstsaid. I have also been fortunate to mentor an undergraduate student who received funding through the NEURO summer fellowship sponsored by the NRPA, as well.

Each of these researchers ongoing projects and personal experiences exemplify exactly what the NRPA was established for to build upon and leverage existing strengths and relationships while providing infrastructure and support to promote research collaborations and raise internal and external recognition of the depth of neuroscience-related research atUK. The NRPA is doing all of this with the goals of growing extramural support, increasing academic productivity, enhancing recruitment of faculty and trainees, and providing new knowledge to address the needs of the citizens of the Commonwealth and beyond.

The NRPA is a valuable part of the UK research community because it provides an infrastructure and resources that benefit neuroscience research broadly across the campus, said NRPA Co-Director Linda Van Eldik, Ph.D., SBCoA director, professor of neuroscience, and Dr. E. Vernon Smith and Eloise C. Smith Alzheimer's Research Endowed Chair. The NRPA is facilitating exciting new collaborations and interactions between basic/translational and clinical teams.

The NRPA is part of the UK Research Priorities Initiative, funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research. This initiative encompasses seven priority areas: cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes & obesity, diversity & inclusion, energy, neuroscience, and substance use disorder. These areas were chosen based onlocal relevance,existing funding strength, sustainability and disciplinary scholarly diversity.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R35NS116824 and P01NS097197, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award NumbersR01AG066653,R01AG062550 and R01AG070830, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes ofHealth under Award Number R01DK27221, andtheNational Cancer Instituteof the National Institutes of Health under AwardNumberP30CA177558. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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UK Neuroscience Research Priority Area Brings Diverse Groups Together to Advance Studies - UKNow

Neuroscience

Neuroscience reveals social distancing effects on the brain – Fast Company

With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, its finally time for those now vaccinated whove been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life.

Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19s spread worldwidepreventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on peoples mental health.

In a national survey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S.including 61% of young adultsreported feeling serious loneliness during the pandemic. Statistics like these suggest people would be itching to hit the social scene.

But if the idea of making small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, youre not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination status.

So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars?

Well, the brain is remarkably adaptable. And while we cant know exactly what our brains have gone through over the last year, neuroscientists like me have some insight into how social isolation and resocialization affect the brain.

Humans have an evolutionarily hardwired need to socializethough it may not feel like it when deciding between a dinner invite and rewatching Schitts Creek.

From insects to primates, maintaining social networks is critical for survival in the animal kingdom. Social groups provide mating prospects, cooperative hunting, and protection from predators.

But social homeostasisthe right balance of social connectionsmust be met. Small social networks cant deliver those benefits, while large ones increase competition for resources and mates. Because of this, human brains developed specialized circuitry to gauge our relationships and make the correct adjustmentsmuch like a social thermostat.

Social homeostasis involves many brain regions, and at the center is the mesocorticolimbic circuitor reward system. That same circuit motivates you to eat chocolate when you crave something sweet or swipe on Tinder when you crave . . . well, you get it.

And like those motivations, a recent study found that reducing social interaction causes social cravingsproducing brain activity patterns similar to food deprivation.

So if people hunger for social connection like they hunger for food, what happens to the brain when you starve socially?

Scientists cant shove people into isolation and look inside their brains. Instead, researchers rely on lab animals to learn more about social brain wiring. Luckily, because social bonds are essential in the animal kingdom, these same brain circuits are found across species.

Another important region for social homeostasis is the hippocampusthe brains learning and memory center. Successful social circles require you to learn social behaviorssuch as selflessness and cooperationand recognize friends from foes. But your brain stores tremendous amounts of information and must remove unimportant connections. So, like most of your high school Spanishif you dont use it, you lose it.

Several animal studies show that even temporary adulthood isolation impairs both social memory, like recognizing a familiar face, and working memory, like recalling a recipe while cooking.

And isolated humans may be just as forgetful. Antarctic expeditioners had shrunken hippocampi after just 14 months of social isolation. Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life.

So, human beings might not be roaming the wild anymore, but social homeostasis is still critical to survival. Luckily, as adaptable as the brain is to isolation, the same may be true with resocialization.

Though only a few studies have explored the reversibility of the anxiety and stress associated with isolation, they suggest that resocialization repairs these effects.

One study, for example, found that formerly isolated marmosets first had higher stress and cortisol levels when resocialized but then quickly recovered. Adorably, the once-isolated animals even spent more time grooming their new buddies.

Social memory and cognitive function also seem to be highly adaptable.

Mouse and rat studies report that while animals cannot recognize a familiar friend immediately after short-term isolation, they quickly regain their memory after resocializing.

And there may be hope for people emerging from socially distanced lockdown as well. A recent Scottish study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that residents had some cognitive decline during the harshest lockdown weeks but quickly recovered once restrictions eased.

Unfortunately, studies like these are still sparse. And while animal research is informative, it likely represents extreme scenarios since people werent in total isolation over the last year. Unlike mice stuck in cages, many in the U.S. had virtual game nights and Zoom birthday parties (lucky us).

So power through the nervous elevator chats and pesky brain fog, because un-social distancing should reset your social homeostasis very soon.

Kareem Clark is a postdoctoral associate in neuroscience at Virginia Tech.

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Neuroscience reveals social distancing effects on the brain - Fast Company

Neuroscience

The neuroscience behind why your brain may need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’ – The Conversation US

With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, its finally time for those now vaccinated whove been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life.

Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19s spread worldwide preventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on peoples mental health.

In a national survey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S. including 61% of young adults reported feeling serious loneliness during the pandemic. Statistics like these suggest people would be itching to hit the social scene.

But if the idea of making small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, youre not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination status.

So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars?

Well, the brain is remarkably adaptable. And while we cant know exactly what our brains have gone through over the last year, neuroscientists like me have some insight into how social isolation and resocialization affect the brain.

Humans have an evolutionarily hardwired need to socialize though it may not feel like it when deciding between a dinner invite and rewatching Schitts Creek.

From insects to primates, maintaining social networks is critical for survival in the animal kingdom. Social groups provide mating prospects, cooperative hunting and protection from predators.

But social homeostasis the right balance of social connections must be met. Small social networks cant deliver those benefits, while large ones increase competition for resources and mates. Because of this, human brains developed specialized circuitry to gauge our relationships and make the correct adjustments much like a social thermostat.

Social homeostasis involves many brain regions, and at the center is the mesocorticolimbic circuit or reward system. That same circuit motivates you to eat chocolate when you crave something sweet or swipe on Tinder when you crave well, you get it.

And like those motivations, a recent study found that reducing social interaction causes social cravings producing brain activity patterns similar to food deprivation.

So if people hunger for social connection like they hunger for food, what happens to the brain when you starve socially?

Scientists cant shove people into isolation and look inside their brains. Instead, researchers rely on lab animals to learn more about social brain wiring. Luckily, because social bonds are essential in the animal kingdom, these same brain circuits are found across species.

One prominent effect of social isolation is you guessed it increased anxiety and stress.

Many studies find that removing animals from their cage buddies increases anxiety-like behaviors and cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Human studies also support this, as people with small social circles have higher cortisol levels and other anxiety-related symptoms similar to socially deprived lab animals.

Evolutionarily this effect makes sense animals that lose group protection must become hypervigilant to fend for themselves. And it doesnt just occur in the wild. One study found that self-described lonely people are more vigilant of social threats like rejection or exclusion.

Another important region for social homeostasis is the hippocampus the brains learning and memory center. Successful social circles require you to learn social behaviors such as selflessness and cooperation and recognize friends from foes. But your brain stores tremendous amounts of information and must remove unimportant connections. So, like most of your high school Spanish if you dont use it, you lose it.

Several animal studies show that even temporary adulthood isolation impairs both social memory like recognizing a familiar face and working memory like recalling a recipe while cooking.

And isolated humans may be just as forgetful. Antarctic expeditioners had shrunken hippocampi after just 14 months of social isolation. Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life.

So, human beings might not be roaming the wild anymore, but social homeostasis is still critical to survival. Luckily, as adaptable as the brain is to isolation, the same may be true with resocialization.

Though only a few studies have explored the reversibility of the anxiety and stress associated with isolation, they suggest that resocialization repairs these effects.

One study, for example, found that formerly isolated marmosets first had higher stress and cortisol levels when resocialized but then quickly recovered. Adorably, the once-isolated animals even spent more time grooming their new buddies.

Social memory and cognitive function also seem to be highly adaptable.

Mouse and rat studies report that while animals cannot recognize a familiar friend immediately after short-term isolation, they quickly regain their memory after resocializing.

And there may be hope for people emerging from socially distanced lockdown as well. A recent Scottish study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that residents had some cognitive decline during the harshest lockdown weeks but quickly recovered once restrictions eased.

Unfortunately, studies like these are still sparse. And while animal research is informative, it likely represents extreme scenarios since people werent in total isolation over the last year. Unlike mice stuck in cages, many in the U.S. had virtual game nights and Zoom birthday parties (lucky us).

So power through the nervous elevator chats and pesky brain fog, because un-social distancing should reset your social homeostasis very soon.

[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week. Subscribe to The Conversations science newsletter.]

Read more:
The neuroscience behind why your brain may need time to adjust to 'un-social distancing' - The Conversation US

Neuroscience

The NIHs Diversity Obsession Subverts Science – The Wall Street Journal

The National Institutes of Health supports a multidisciplinary neuroscience initiative to expand understanding of the brain. Research applications include treatments for Alzheimers, Parkinsons, autism and depression. On June 10, NIH director Francis Collins announced a new requirement for participating in the brain initiative. Neurologists, molecular biologists and nanophysicists seeking NIH funding must now submit a plan showing how they will enhance diverse perspectives throughout their research. Scores on the plan for enhancing diverse perspectives will inform funding decisions.

This new requirement is part of Dr. Collinss continuing effort to atone for what he calls biomedical sciences stain of structural racism. The NIH already supports more than 60 diversity and inclusion initiatives, but those have apparently failed to eradicate NIHs own systemic and structural racism.

Each plan for enhancing diverse perspectives must show how the principal investigator will empower individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, such as blacks, the disabled, women and the poor. Institutions are also covered by the diversity mandate. Researchers working on an NIH neuroscience grant should be drawn from institutions that are traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, including community-based organizations.

Dr. Collins provided no evidence for structural racism other than demographic data on NIHs grant applicants and recipients. Black applicants are present in far fewer numbers compared with their representation in the US population, 13.4%, according to Dr. Collinss announcement. In 2020 black scientists made up 2.3% of the 30,061 funding applications the NIH received. Less than 2% of NIH grants go to black principal investigators.

To Dr. Collins and his academic peers, such disparities are virtually irrefutable evidence of discrimination, though grant reviewers dont see an applicants race. But the use of population data as a benchmark for assessing institutional racism ignores racial disparities in academic skills, achievement and study practices that the NIH didnt cause and couldnt possibly do anything to remedy.

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The NIHs Diversity Obsession Subverts Science - The Wall Street Journal

Neuroscience

AMSA and Sunovion Neuroscience Peer Teaching Program Reaches More Than 400 Students Over Three Years – Business Wire

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Sunovion) today announced completion of the third year of a program to help students understand Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) life science career paths within a pharmaceutical company, gain professional skillsets and foster a deeper knowledge of neuroscience. More than 400 students have participated in the program, including 16 AMSA seniors and juniors who were coached by Sunovions team for their peer teaching roles to deliver neuroscience content to seventh grade students at AMSA between 2019 and 2021.

The AMSA high school students developed lesson plans about the central and peripheral nervous systems that they taught seventh grade students at AMSA via video or in-person classroom settings, with the goal to enhance and complement their existing biology class curriculum. This neuroscience content was developed in consultation with a cross-functional team from Sunovion with a range of expertise. The students also received coaching from Sunovion related to potential career paths, presentation development and delivery skills, as well as other skillsets for professional work environments.

AMSA students are benefitting from the immediate and longer-term impacts of this program with Sunovion, which has not only helped to enhance our science education but also has provided professional skillsets that will empower them to succeed in the workplace, said Ellen Linzey, Executive Director, AMSA. We are proud of this programs alignment with our focus on instilling a love for learning, as well as the integrated curriculum that we have developed in partnership with students, faculty and the Sunovion team.

With Sunovions leadership in the Central Nervous System (CNS) area, we feel a responsibility to impart this knowledge to next generation innovators. The passion and commitment of AMSA peer teachers and students to gain an understanding of the complexities of neurobiology is impressive and our employee coaches have been delighted to share their expertise, said Ken Koblan, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, who serves as Sunovions executive sponsor of the program with AMSA. Seeing the positive impact of this program over three years is rewarding and we value the close collaboration with AMSA administration and faculty to help inspire the futures of these students.

The 2021 Sunovion-AMSA program student teachers, five seniors and two juniors, were honored during a virtual ceremony on May 27, 2021. Upon completion of their Capstone Project, seniors were provided with certificates of completion and scholarships to encourage their academic careers and consideration of further learning in healthcare, the life sciences and neurobiology. The program was initiated in 2019 through the collaboration of Mark Vital, Community Outreach Manager, AMSA and Wendy Scoppa, Senior Manager, Community Relations, Sunovion. A video of the ceremony and project can be viewed here.

About Advanced Math & Science Academy (AMSA)

Ranked as the #3 public high school in Massachusetts by U.S. News & World Report, The Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) was chartered by the Massachusetts Department of Education in February 2004 and opened in September 2005. AMSAs teaching model is centered on rigorous college-oriented education for all students. AMSAs teaching philosophy involves starting challenging abstract learning, typically expected for high school students, early in the middle school grades. AMSA creates an atmosphere of celebration of knowledge where children of all backgrounds and abilities excel in all subjects, especially in math, science and technology, empowering them to succeed in the workplace in our modern, high-tech world. AMSA's core values are collective and individual values: Model Integrity, Pursue Your Excellence and Foster Community. Learn more about AMSA at http://www.amsacs.org and join AMSA on social media at http://www.amsacs.org/social.

About Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Sunovion)

Sunovion is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the innovative application of science and medicine to help people with serious medical conditions. Sunovions vision is to lead the way to a healthier world. The companys spirit of innovation is driven by the conviction that scientific excellence paired with meaningful advocacy and relevant education can improve lives. With patients at the center of everything it does, Sunovion has charted new paths to life-transforming treatments that reflect ongoing investments in research and development and an unwavering commitment to support people with psychiatric, neurological and respiratory conditions. Headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., Sunovion is an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd. Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Europe Ltd., based in London, England, and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., based in Mississauga, Ontario, are wholly-owned direct subsidiaries of Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Additional information can be found on the companys web sites: http://www.sunovion.com, http://www.sunovion.eu and http://www.sunovion.ca. Connect with Sunovion on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

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AMSA and Sunovion Neuroscience Peer Teaching Program Reaches More Than 400 Students Over Three Years - Business Wire

Neuroscience

OU Professor Barbara Oakley named one of ’35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering’ – 2021 – School of Engineering and Computer Science – News – OU…

Oakland University Professor Barbara Oakley has been selected as one of the 35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering Today by AcademicInfluence.com.

It was very much a surprise to be honored as one of the highly influential women in engineering, said Oakley, a distinguished professor of engineering at OU. All I can say is that Oakland University has clearly been a great intellectual home for me, allowing me to look with fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives at the best of what science, and especially neuroscience, has to help us reseat education on a solid scientific foundation.

The list also includes groundbreaking roboticists, founders of high-tech companies, CEOs, astronauts, medical experts, and pioneers in engineering sub-disciplines like computer science and electrical engineering, as well as revolutionary thinkers in areas like nano-medicine and nuclear power.

Engineering has a reputation as a mostly male profession, said Dr. Jed Macosko, academic director of AcademicInfluence.com and professor of physics at Wake Forest University. We want to set the record straight and let more people know that women engineers are not only growing in number; but are also driving the field forward in new and creative ways. They bring innovative thinking and bold solutions that make their professions better; and more people need to know who they are and see why they are the vanguard of a new era in engineering.

Professor Oakley is both a revolutionary and true innovator in the area of pedagogy and is recognized as one of the worlds leading experts in learning, especially in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, and in the design of high-quality online pedagogical materials.

Since joining Oakland University in 1998, she has made significant contributions as a productive scholar in the areas of STEM pedagogy, neuroscience and social behavior. Her books have been translated into over 20 different languages around the world.

She has also pioneered important work that has significantly helped the Academy understand what impacts a persons interest in subject matter, along with what affects their ability to master mentally difficult material. Of the 10,000 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) currently available worldwide, her course,Learning How to Learn, is one of the worlds most popular with over 3 million registered learners from over 200 countries.

My goal is to open career doors for all students when it comes to engineering, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, Oakley said.

In recognition of her exemplary course materials and approach, Oakley was honored as Courseras Inaugural Innovation Instructor in 2015, is the recipient of the IEEE William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education, the Theo C. Pilkington Award for Biomedical Engineering Education, Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year, and the Oakland University Teaching Excellence Award. She was appointed to the rank of distinguished professor in February 2021.

For more information about this years 35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering Today, visit academicinfluence.com/rankings/people/influential-women-engineers.

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OU Professor Barbara Oakley named one of '35 Highly Influential Women in Engineering' - 2021 - School of Engineering and Computer Science - News - OU...

Neuroscience

How do babies perceive the world? – MIT Technology Review

Its Ursulas third time in the functional MRI machine. Heather Kosakowski, a PhD student in cognitive neuroscience, is hoping to get just two precious minutes of data from her session. Even though Ursula has been booked to have her brain scanned for two hours, its far from a sure thing. Her first two sessions, also booked for two hours each, yielded only eight minutes of usable material combined.

The task verges on the impossible. Kosakowski needs Ursula to stay both awake, watching projected images of faces and scenes, and very still, ideally for seconds or even minutes at a time. Every twitch and wiggle blurs the MRIs scan, obscuring the image and rendering it useless. But Ursula tends to squirm and then, inevitably, fall asleepexactly what you would expect from a six-month-old baby.

Scanning infants brains while theyre awake is incredibly difficult and time consuming, and theres always a risk that a session will produce no data at all. A motivated adult is capable of staying perfectly still for two hours, yielding brain images that read like an open book. Ursulas sessions produce something more akin to a book thats been torn up and thrown in a river. Kosakowski, who is jointly advised by cognitive neuroscience professors Nancy Kanwisher 80, PhD 86, and Rebecca Saxe, PhD 03, needs to carefully fish out the usable sections and stitch them together before she can read the story they reveal.

Heather is probably the most skilled person alive today at getting high-quality functional MRI data from human infants, says Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience.

If Kosakowski doesnt get the two minutes of still brain images she needs, its possible Ursulas two previous visits will have been for nothing. But if she can get a clear fMRI reading, she will be one step closer to answering one of the most profound questions in modern neuroscience: What are the physical underpinnings of the human mind?

Kosakowski is no stranger to overcoming obstacles. Her childhood was characterized by the sort of instability that made any kind of higher education feel unattainable. Her father was in the military, so her family moved around a lot. Then her parents divorced, and the difficulties multiplied. When she was about seven, she and her mother moved into a homeless shelter, and at 11, Kosakowski was put into foster care in Western Massachusetts. Having a bachelors degree was always my dream, she says, but she calls her first attempt at college a dismal failure.

RACHEL FRITTS

I dropped out, I was homeless and had no job, and then I totaled my car and I was like, what am I going to do with my life? she recalls. She decided to enter the Marine Corps but hoped she might someday get a second shot at college.

After several years in the military, Kosakowski left the Marines and returned to Massachusetts, enrolling part time at Massachusetts Bay Community College. Maybe, she thought, a bachelors degree wasnt so far out of reach after all. She set her sights on Smith College, where she was admitted. But around the time she received that piece of news, she also got another: she was pregnant.

Kosakowski didnt go to college anywhere that fall, but her eagerness to learn persisted. Her natural curiosity found an outlet in her baby, Hannah, who was born that October. She watched Hannah experience grass for the first time in the spring, delighting at how she reacted to this strange new material covering the ground. As Hannah explored her environment, Kosakowski kept wondering what things looked like from her perspective. What was she experiencing? How was she making sense of the world around her?

When Hannah was two, Kosakowski got a job at a nonprofit that was working to speed up research on multiple sclerosis, giving her the opportunity to attend a neuroscience conference. After that I was kind of hooked, she says. I was like, okay, the thing I really want to be doing is research, and in order to do research I need a degree. I have to go back to school.

Kosakowski was accepted to Wellesley Collegea school she had written off years before because it was so competitive. She became fascinated with neuroscience, peppering her professors with questions until one said, Heather, some of the questions you ask, nobody knows the answer. You should get a PhD.

Just as Kosakowski graduated from Wellesley, Saxe was looking for a manager for her lab, which happened to be one of the only labs in the world studying babies in MRIs while they are awakeand consequently one of the only ones that could answer Kosakowskis questions about the nature of infant cognition. She applied for the position and got it.

When her foster sister had a baby, Kosakowski went to Saxe and asked if she could learn how to use the fMRI to scan the infants brain. I think she thought Id just scan my niece and be done with it, Kosakowski says. But I just kept scanning, and she never told me to stop. Saxe, impressed with Kosakowskis work and determination, agreed to take her on as a graduate student. In 2017, she left her job as lab manager and began her first semester as a PhD candidate at MIT.

Kanwisher still remembers the first time she saw Kosakowski scan a baby in the MRI. She was considering working with Kosakowski and Saxe on their infant study, but at first she was highly skeptical. This kid is squealing like crazy. The mom is nervous. The whole thing is stressful. And this goes on and on and Heathers not giving up, she says. Thenboom. The clouds part, the kid smiles, Heather pops the kid into the MRI scanner, and like a minute later she scans beautiful data. Just the persistence, the skill, is spectacular.

Kosakowskis current study focuses on how the brains of babies just two to nine months old respond to short videos of faces or bodiesand how that differs from their response to scenes without people. She is the first to find evidence of this kind of specialization in children under five years old. The information shes after can only be measured with fMRI. Magnetic resonance imaging allows researchers to take high-resolution pictures of cross-sections of the brain. Functional MRI adds another layer to this, recording images of brain activity in real time. When neurons in one section of the brain are particularly active, blood flow increases to fuel that region. This shows up as a bright spot on fMRI scans.

Researchers have spent decades using fMRI to prove that sections of the adult brain are highly specialized for certain tasks, and to pinpoint exactly which areas are specialized for which functions. The mind and brain have all this structure. Were not just generically smart. Were smart in very particular ways about very particular things that humans do, Kanwisher says. If you look at the structure, you see this set of dozens of regions of the brain, each that does a very distinctive, different thing Its impossible to look at that and not wonder, How did that structure get wired up?

When adults look at faces, for instance, a section of the brain called the fusiform face area, or FFA, lights up. In other words, if researchers put adults in MRI machines and show them images of both faces and objects, the FFA will only respond to faces. The parahippocampal place area (PPA), meanwhile, responds most strongly to depictions of scenes. Kanwisher herself named the FFA after leading the team that discovered it in 1997, and she led the effort to pinpoint and describe the PPA in 1998. She and her colleagues also discovered the brain section known as the extrastriate body area (EBA), which responds strongly to pictures of body parts, in 2001.

[Heather is] scanning the youngest awake humans that anybody can scan and asking what structure is in the brain within a few months of birth, Kanwisher says. And thats just one of the most thrilling questions in all of psychology, neuroscience, and deep philosophy: What is the structure of our minds and where does it come from?

Preliminary results from Kosakowskis study provide some of the strongest evidence yet that some functions of our brain may be innate rather than learned. Babies also have selective responses for faces, bodies, and scenes in the FFA, EBA, and PPA, Kosakowski says. Nobody has ever found that before. And it was completely not expected that we would find that.

HEATHER KOSAKOWSKI

The covid-19 pandemic, though, has brought its own set of challenges. The fMRI sessions had to be put on hold, and she has spent much of the last year analyzing her data at home. Covid-19 has greatly impacted me in that I am working from home full time and also a single parentthe same way its impacted lots of families with children, Kosakowski says. She hopes to have the opportunity to scan more infantsto begin studying their auditory processing before graduating in May 2022. But Ursulas session in late 2019 turns out to have been one of her last chances to get precious data for her dissertation.

In that session, Ursula had fallen asleep in the scanner, but Kosakowski was in high spirits as it wrapped up. She was pretty sure shed managed to get the dataand shed later confirm she was right. As Ursulas mother left to change out of MRI-friendly scrubs, Kosakowski scooped up the groggy baby and held her as she sat in front of a computer. The unflappable grad student has an uncanny ability to keep babies happy and relaxeda skill no PhD program will teach you, but one thats invaluable when every extra second of clean data helps.

Finally, she pulled up the image shed been looking for, pointing toward the screen as Ursulas gaze followed her finger. Someday, thanks to their combined efforts, we might have a better understanding of how Ursula perceived the image before her. Look! Kosakowski told the baby in her arms. Thats your brain!

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How do babies perceive the world? - MIT Technology Review