Behavioral neuroscience最新文献

The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing stressor that has resulted in the exacerbation of mental health problems worldwide. However, longitudinal studies that identify preexisting behavioral and neurobiological factors associated with mental health outcomes during the pandemic are lacking. Here, we examined associations between prepandemic coping strategy engagement and frontolimbic circuitry with internalizing symptoms during the pandemic. In 85 adults (71.8% female; age 18-30 years), we assessed prototypically adaptive coping strategies (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale), resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging functional connectivity (FC) of frontolimbic circuitry, and depression and anxiety symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory, Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders-Adult, respectively). We conducted general linear models to test preregistered hypotheses that (1) lower coping engagement prepandemic and (2) weaker frontolimbic FC prepandemic would predict elevated symptoms during the pandemic; and (3) coping would interact with FC to predict symptoms during the pandemic. Depression and anxiety symptoms worsened during the pandemic (ps < .001). Prepandemic adaptive coping engagement and frontolimbic FC were not associated with depression or anxiety symptoms during the pandemic (uncorrected ps > .05). Coping interacted with insula-rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) FC (p = .003, pFDR = .014) and with insula-ventral ACC FC (p < .001, pFDR < .001) to predict depression symptoms, but these findings did not survive FDR correction after removal of outliers. Findings from our preregistered study suggest that specific prepandemic factors, particularly adaptive coping and frontolimbic circuitry, are not robustly associated with emotional responses to the pandemic. Additional studies that identify preexisting neurobehavioral factors implicated in mental health outcomes during global health crises are needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Repetitive bouts of binge drinking can lead to neuroplastic events that alter ethanol's pharmacologic effects and perpetuate excessive consumption. The corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) system is an example of ethanol-induced neuroadaptations that drive excessive ethanol consumption. Our laboratory has previously shown that CRF antagonist, when infused into the central amygdala (CeA), reduces binge-like ethanol consumption. The present study extends this research by assessing the effects of silencing CRF-producing neurons in CeA on binge-like ethanol drinking stemming from "Drinking in the Dark" (DID) procedures. CRF-ires-Cre mice underwent surgery to infuse G_i/o-coupled Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD) virus or a control virus into either the CeA or basolateral amygdala (BLA). G_i/o-DREADD-induced CRF-neuronal inhibition in the CeA resulted in a 33% decrease in binge-like ethanol consumption. However, no effect on ethanol consumption was seen after DREADD manipulation in the BLA. Moreover, CeA CRF-neuronal inhibition had no effect on sucrose consumption. The effects of silencing CRF neurons in the CeA on ethanol consumption are not secondary to changes in motor function or anxiety-like behaviors as assessed in the open-field test (OFT). Finally, the DREADD construct's functional ability to inhibit CRF-neuronal activity was demonstrated by reduced ethanol-induced c-Fos following DREADD activation. Together, these data suggest that the CRF neurons in the CeA play an important role in binge ethanol consumption and that inhibition of the CRF-signaling pathway remains a viable target for manipulating binge-like ethanol consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Successful navigation depends critically upon two broad categories of spatial navigation strategies that include allocentric and egocentric reference frames, relying on external or internal spatial information, respectively. As with older adults, aged rats show robust impairments on a number of different spatial navigation tasks. There is some evidence that these navigation impairments are accompanied by a bias toward relying on egocentric over allocentric navigation strategies. To test the degree to which young and aged animals utilize these two navigation approaches, a novel behavioral arena was used in which rats are trained to traverse a circular track and to stop at a learned goal location that is fixed with respect to a panorama of visual cues projected onto the surrounding walls. By instantaneously rotating the cues, allocentric and egocentric reference frames were put in direct and immediate conflict and goal navigation performance was assessed with respect to how accurately young and aged animals were able to utilize the rotated cues. Behavioral data collected from nine young and eight aged animals revealed that both age groups were able to update their navigation performance following cue rotation. Contrary to what was expected, however, aged animals showed more accurate overall goal navigation performance, stronger allocentric strategy use, and more evident changes in behavior in response to cue rotation compared to younger animals. The young rats appeared to mix egocentric and allocentric strategies for ICR task solution. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The ability to remember sequences of events is fundamental to episodic memory. While rodent studies have examined sex and estrous cycle in episodic-like spatial memory tasks, little is known about these biological variables in memory for sequences of events that depend on representations of temporal context. We investigated the role of sex and estrous cycle in rats during training and testing stages of a cross-species validated sequence memory task (Jayachandran et al., 2019). Rats were trained on a two four-odor sequence memory task delivered on opposite ends of a linear track. Training occurred in six successive stages starting with learning to poke in a nose-port for ≥ 1.2 s; eventually demonstrating sequence memory by holding their nose in the port ≥ 1 s for in-sequence odors and < 1 s for out-of-sequence odors. Performance was analyzed across sex and estrous cycle (proestrus, estrus, metestrus, and diestrus), the latter being determined by cellular composition of a daily vaginal lavage. We found no evidence of sex differences in asymptotic sequence memory performance, similar to humans performing an analogous task (Reeders et al., 2021). Likewise, no differences in sequence memory performance were found across the estrous cycle. Some caveats are that males acquired out-of-sequence trials faster during training with a 3-odor sequence, but this apparent advantage did not carry over to the 4-odor sequence. Additionally, males had shorter poke times overall which seem consistent with a decreased overall response inhibition because they occurred regardless of sequence demands. Together, these results suggest sex and estrous cycle are not major factors in sequence memory capacities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The involvement of the cerebellum in suprasecond interval timing (i.e., timing in the seconds to minutes range) is controversial. A limited amount of evidence from humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents has shown that the lateral cerebellum, including the lateral cerebellar nucleus (LCN), may be necessary for successful suprasecond timing performance. However, many existing studies have pitfalls, such as limited timing outcome measures and confounded task demands. In addition, many existing studies relied on well-trained subjects. This approach may be a drawback, as the cerebellum is hypothesized to carry out ongoing error correction to limit timing variability. By using only experienced subjects, past timing studies may have missed a critical window of cerebellar involvement. In the experiments described here, we pharmacologically inactivated the rat LCN across three different peak interval timing tasks. We structured our tasks to address past confounds, collect timing variability measures, and characterize performance during target duration acquisition. Across these various tasks, we did not find strong support for cerebellar involvement in suprasecond interval timing. Our findings support the existing distinction of the cerebellum as a subsecond interval timing brain region. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The ability to predict and prepare for near- and far-future events is among the most fundamental computations the brain performs. Because of the importance of time for prediction and sensorimotor processing, the brain has evolved multiple mechanisms to tell and encode time across scales ranging from microseconds to days and beyond. Converging experimental and computational data indicate that, on the scale of seconds, timing relies on diverse neural mechanisms distributed across different brain areas. Among the different encoding mechanisms on the scale of seconds, we distinguish between neural population clocks and ramping activity as distinct strategies to encode time. One instance of neural population clocks, neural sequences, represents in some ways an optimal and flexible dynamic regime for the encoding of time. Specifically, neural sequences comprise a high-dimensional representation that can be used by downstream areas to flexibly generate arbitrarily simple and complex output patterns using biologically plausible learning rules. We propose that high-level integration areas may use high-dimensional dynamics such as neural sequences to encode time, providing downstream areas information to build low-dimensional ramp-like activity that can drive movements and temporal expectation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Animals routinely learn to associate environmental stimuli and self-generated actions with their outcomes such as rewards. One of the most popular theoretical models of such learning is the reinforcement learning (RL) framework. The simplest form of RL, model-free RL, is widely applied to explain animal behavior in numerous neuroscientific studies. More complex RL versions assume that animals build and store an explicit model of the world in memory. To apply these approaches to explain animal behavior, typical neuroscientific RL models make implicit assumptions about how real animals represent the passage of time. In this perspective, I explicitly list these assumptions and show that they have several problematic implications. I hope that the explicit discussion of these problems encourages the field to seriously examine the assumptions underlying timing and reinforcement learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).