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Ludwig M, Tobin VA, Callahan MF, Papadaki E, Becker A, Engelmann M, Leng G (2013). Intranasal application of vasopressin fails to elicit changes in brain immediate-early gene expression, neural activity, and behavioural performance of rats. Journal Journal of Neuroendocrinology 25:655-667.
- I have been thinking a lot about intranasal oxytocin and vasopressin. This paper suggests that there is no change in brain activity or behavior from intranasal OT and VP, although other papers have found behavioral changes.
- The following papers also were brought up during our (robust and interesting) discussion:
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- J. Goodson (2013). Deconstructing sociality, social evolution and relevant nonapeptide functions. Psychneuroendocrinology 38:465-478.
- This review, written by offspring of the Cornell Psych Department, stresses two important concepts relevant to all areas represented by attendees of the CNS journal club: 1) Careful consideration needs to be taken with how we define behavior, and 2) We must utilize a comparative approach in order to understand the evolution of behavior.
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S. Warren, E. Yacoub & G. Ghose (2014). Featural and temporal attention selectively enhance task-appropriate representations in human primary visual cortex. Nature Communications 5:5643.
This paper highlights two basic points that are important for anyone who cares about how brains work. First, attention alters the behavior of neuronal populations. As a result, tasks can impact what is represented and measured. Second, what is represented by neuronal populations is influenced by expectations along multiple dimensions, including visual features, timing, and semantics (not just space).
- Optional additional reading: T. Çukur, S. Nishimoto, A. Huth & J. Gallant (2013). Attention during natural vision warps semantic representation across the human brain. Nature Neuroscience 16(6):763-770.
26 September 2017: Angela Freeman
M. Sadananda, M.¨ohr, R. Schwarting (2008). Playback of 22-kHz and 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations induces differential c-fos expression in rat brain. Neuroscience Letters. 435:17-23.
- I picked my paper because it is one of very few that looks at the neural basis of rodent vocalizations. And I'm all about communication, and I did a similar study on ground squirrel communication, which I am presenting at SFN this year, so I wanted to discuss this paper to prep for what things might be good to address in my own work.
3 October 2017: Jesse Werth
B. Lasztoczi and T. Klausberger (2016). Hippocampal Place Cells Couple to Three Different Gamma Oscillations during Place Field Traversal. Neuron 91:34-40.
- Article discusses ideas central to neuronal information processing in a relatively well known brain network. We typically think of hippocampal place cells in the context of how much they fire (spike rates; e.g., with respect to place fields and the animal's physical location within an environment). The authors of this article offer an expanded framework that stresses the importance of when these cells fire (think small time-scales, spike-timing), rather than how much.
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