Neurosciences Institute

Lighting and circadian cues shape locomotor strategies for balance and navigation in larval zebrafish

Most fish are inherently unstable and must swim to stabilize posture. How diurnal fish reduce activity at night while maintaining postural control remains unclear. We defined distinct locomotor strategies that larval zebrafish (Danio rerio) use to control posture and navigate the...

Blood proteomics of menopause map to brain aging and dementia risk

Abstract Menopause is a hallmark process in biological aging that has been implicated in later neurodegenerative risk, but the pathways underlying this connection remain unclear. Here we used blood proteomics data from several cohorts to identify biological changes associated wit...

Oropouche virus disrupts neurodevelopment and exhibits congenital infection potential

Oropouche virus (OROV) historically caused a self-limiting disease, yet recent strains have been clinically linked to congenital infection and neurodevelopmental disease. These observations highlight the need to study OROV as a congenital pathogen. Here, using both a historical a...

Reciprocal connections dynamically build consensus between neocortical areas

Abstract The neocortex is organized into specialized areas. Although computations within individual areas have been well studied, it is unclear how these regions function collectively and reconcile potential conflicts to form coherent percepts and decisions. We investigated the j...

Cognitive flexibility deficits differ between the sexes in a transchromosomic mouse model of Down syndrome

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit cognitive and behavioral phenotypes, including intellectual disability, and reduced cognitive flexibility. The TcMAC21 DS mouse model (Tc(HSA21,CAG-EGFP)1Yakaz/J) has a freely segregating human chromosome 21 containing ∼93% of protein-c...

Development of a Translational Assay for Identification and Quantitation of Orthologous Proteins to Aid Drug Development in Preclinical Models

Abstract Unequivocal identification and reproducible quantitation of proteins are key components of research and development activity in drug discovery. In some cases, the target protein might be a protein highly conserved across species; antibody-based assays are not specific en...

Regulatory T cells as drivers of CNS remyelination: neuro-immune cross-talk and comparative insights from mammalian and zebrafish models

Demyelination of the Central Nervous System (CNS) is a pathological process that causes the destruction of the myelin sheath, the insulating cover that protects the nerve fibres. This serves as one of the major attributes of numerous neurological disorders, such as Multiple Scler...

EBV reactivation priming of the peripheral immune system in multiple sclerosis relapse

Despite decades of research, the cellular and molecular events preceding multiple sclerosis (MS) relapse remain incompletely understood. Here, in this observational study of longitudinal blood samples from patients with relapsing-remitting MS, we used single-cell RNA sequencing,...

COVID-19 lockdown and coverage of maternal health and nutrition care in rural West Bengal, India: a single interrupted time-series analysis

Abstract While COVID-19 lockdowns globally disrupted healthcare, the extent of changes in India’s maternal health and nutrition services coverage in rural settings requires further empirical investigation. Utilizing data from 57,371 pregnancies recorded between January 2012 and D...

Integration of proteomic aging clocks in a phase 2a clinical trial supports simultaneous geroprotective assessment

Abstract Drugs for aging-related diseases may modulate aging itself, but standard clinical trial designs cannot detect such effects. Aging clocks could close this gap, but epigenetic models often yield inconsistent, hard-to-interpret results. In contrast, proteomic clocks, by tra...

Neurophysiological signatures of Stanford Neuromodulation Therapy in treatment resistant depression

ABSTRACT Objective Stanford Neuromodulation Therapy (SNT) has demonstrated impressive efficacy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), but its neurophysiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. This study investigated the neurophysiological correlates of SNT using transcra...

Functional fractionation of large-scale brain networks in the human subcortex

Brain network mapping plays a crucial role in advancing our understanding of human brain organization and the neuroanatomic foundations of cognition. Historically, the identification of large-scale brain networks has focused on the cerebral cortex. Some cortical networks have bee...

Antibody Fc receptor CD16a mediates natural killer cell activation via mechanotransduction of piconewton forces

Natural Killer(NK) cells eliminate target cells through antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity(ADCC), initiated by CD16a(FcγRIIIa) recognizing the Fc region of antibodies bound to the target cell surface. While the recognition is considered to be driven by CD16a-Fc binding...

The perils of omitting omissions when modeling evidence accumulation

Response deadlines are commonly imposed in decision-making research to incentivize speedy decisions and sustained attention. This procedure frequently leads to a proportion of trials in which no response is made, and these omissions are often simply removed from the data during a...

Reward selectively preserves relational structure in memory

Memories tend to form networks that reflect relationships between experiences. These networks, or cognitive graphs, have been used to study how structural features of memory can bias decisions — analogous to how reward shapes choices by prioritizing reward-associated items in mem...