Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

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Previous work has demonstrated the importance of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in contextual control of operant behavior. However, the associated neural circuitry responsible for providing contextual information to the PL is not well understood. In Pavlovian fear conditioning the ventral hippocampus (vH) and its projection to the PL have been shown to be important in supporting the effects of context on learning. The present experiments used chemogenetic inhibition of the direct vH-PL projection or the vH to determine involvement in expression of context-specific operant behavior...

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of a short period of normobaric hypoxic exposure on spatial learning and memory, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in the rat hippocampus. Hypoxic conditions were set at 12.5% O2 . We compared all variables between normoxic trials (Norm), after 24 h (Hypo-24 h), and after 72 h of hypoxic exposure (Hypo-72 h). Spatial learning and memory were evaluated by using a water-finding task in an open field. Time to find water drinking fountains was significantly extended in Hypo 24 h (36...

BACKGROUND: Neurexins, essential synaptic proteins, are linked to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia. OBJECTIVE: Through this systematic review, we aimed to shed light on the relationship between neurexin dysfunction and its implications in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric manifestations. Both animal and human-induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) models served as our primary investigative platforms...

The regulation of fear memories is critical for adaptive behaviors and dysregulation of these processes is implicated in trauma- and stress-related disorders. Treatments for these disorders include pharmacological interventions as well as exposure-based therapies, which rely upon extinction learning. Considerable attention has been directed toward elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying fear and extinction learning. In this review, we will discuss historic discoveries and emerging evidence on the neural mechanisms of the adaptive regulation of fear and extinction memories...

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) commonly occurs after surgery, particularly in elderly individuals. It is characterized by a notable decline in cognitive performance, encompassing memory, attention, coordination, orientation, verbal fluency, and executive function. This reduction in cognitive abilities contributes to extended hospital stays and heightened mortality. The prevalence of POCD can reach 40% within 1 week following cardiovascular surgery and remains as high as 17% 3 months post-surgery...

Many individuals undergo mating and/or other aspects of reproductive experience at some point in their lives, and pregnancy and childbirth in particular are associated with alterations in the prevalence of several psychiatric disorders. Research in rodents shows that maternal experience affects spatial learning and other aspects of hippocampal function. In contrast, there has been little work in animal models concerning how reproductive experience affects cost-benefit decision making, despite the relevance of this aspect of cognition for psychiatric disorders...

BACKGROUND: As machine learning technology continues to advance and the need for standardized behavioral quantification grows, commercial and open-source automated behavioral analysis tools are gaining prominence in behavioral neuroscience. We present a comparative analysis of three behavioral analysis pipelines-DeepLabCut (DLC) and Simple Behavioral Analysis (SimBA), HomeCageScan (HCS), and manual scoring-in measuring repetitive self-grooming among mice. METHODS: Grooming behavior of mice was recorded at baseline and after water spray or restraint treatments...

In the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), the role of cholinergic modulation via α7 nicotinic receptors and their involvement in memory is unknown. In recent years, the RSC has been shown to deteriorate in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Likewise, the cholinergic system has been postulated as one of those responsible for cognitive impairment in patients with AD. Great interest has arisen in the study of α7 nicotinic receptors as more specific targets for the treatment of this disease. For this reason, we aim to study the role of α7 receptors of the RSC in memory processing...

Pain, a universal and burdensome condition, influences numerous individuals worldwide. It encompasses sensory, emotional, and cognitive facets, with recent research placing a heightened emphasis on comprehending pain's impact on emotion and cognition. Cognitive bias, which encompasses attentional bias, interpretation bias, and memory bias, signifies the presence of cognitive distortions influenced by emotional factors. It has gained significant prominence in pain-related research. Human studies have shown that individuals experiencing pain exhibit cognitive bias...

BACKGROUND: While younger adults are more likely to attend to, process, and remember negative relative to positive information, healthy older adults show the opposite pattern. The current study evaluates when, exactly, this positivity shift begins, and how it influences memory performance for positive, negative, and neutral information. METHODS: A total of 274 healthy early middle-aged (35-47), late middle-aged (48-59), and older adults (>59) viewed scenes consisting of a negative, positive, or a neutral object placed on a plausible neutral background, and rated each scene for its valence and arousal...

INTRODUCTION: In a variety of behavioral procedures animals will show selective fear responding in shock-associated contexts, but not in other contexts. However, several factors can lead to generalized fear behavior, where responding is no longer constrained to the conditioning context and will transfer to novel contexts. METHODS: Here, we assessed memory generalization using an inhibitory avoidance paradigm to determine if generalized avoidance behavior engages the retrosplenial cortex (RSC)...

BACKGROUND: Despite the increasing global prevalence of depression, existing treatment methods have limitations. Acupuncture has been recognized for its potential to alleviate various diseases by regulating inflammatory cytokines. However, a comprehensive systematic analysis of the effects of acupuncture on depression through inflammatory cytokines is currently lacking. This review aims to evaluate the impact of acupuncture on inflammatory cytokines in animal models of depression. METHODS: A comprehensive search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and the Research Information Service System to identify studies that met predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Here, we propose a model of remote memory (BaconREM), which is an extension of a previously published Bayesian model of context fear learning (BACON) that accounts for many aspects of recently learned context fear. BaconREM simulates most known phenomenology of remote context fear as studied in rodents and makes new predictions. In particular, it predicts the well-known observation that fear that was conditioned to a recently encoded context becomes hippocampus-independent and shows much-enhanced generalization ("hyper-generalization") when systems consolidation occurs (i...

RATIONALE: Cannabis is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances globally. Cannabis use can be associated with alterations of reward processing, including affective flattening, apathy, anhedonia, and lower sensitivity to natural rewards in conjunction with higher sensitivity to cannabis-related rewards. Such alterations have been posited to be driven by changes in underlying brain reward pathways, as per prominent neuroscientific theories of addiction. Functional neuroimaging (fMRI) studies have examined brain reward function in cannabis users via the monetary incentive delay (MID) fMRI task; however, this evidence is yet to be systematically synthesised...

In the presented review, we analyzed the physiology of male sexual arousal and its relation to the motivational aspects of this behavior. We highlighted the distinction between these processes based on observable physiological and behavioral parameters. Thus, we proposed the experimentally applicable differentiation between sexual arousal (SA) and sexual motivation (SM). We propose to define sexual arousal as an overall autonomic nervous system response leading to penile erection, triggered selectively by specific sexual cues...

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurologic disease and the most common cause of dementia. Classic pathology in AD is characterized by inflammation, abnormal presence of tau protein, and aggregation of β-amyloid that disrupt normal neuronal function and lead to cell death. Deficits in communication also occur during disease progression and significantly reduce health, well-being, and quality of life. Because clinical diagnosis occurs in the mid-stage of the disease, characterizing the prodrome and early stages in humans is currently challenging...

Major depressive disorder affects approximately 8.4% of the United States population. The World Health Organization estimates that 280 million adults worldwide are suffering from depression. They have estimated that by 2030 it will be the second most serious condition. Current treatment relies on the monoamine hypothesis, however, one-third of patients with MDD do not respond to monoamine-based antidepressants. For years, it was hypothesized that the primary pathway of MDD involved serotonin as the main neurotransmitter...

INTRODUCTION: Clinical and preclinical research on cocaine use disorder (CUD) has shown that sex differences in drug seeking are influenced by hormonal fluctuations. Estradiol (E2), a sex steroid hormone, has been linked to female drug effects, vulnerability to use/abuse, and psychosocial factors. Preclinical studies show that estradiol in females facilitates the extinction of cocaine-seeking behavior indicating a possible role in regulating extinction learning. Similar to females, males' brains contain the aromatase enzyme which converts testosterone to estradiol...