Previous studies showed that harnessing innate immunity via CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) modulates age-related defects. This study used elderly female squirrel monkeys as model of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Current immunotherapeutic trials for Alzheimer’s disease have amyloid-related imaging flaws, which are linked to the presence of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). Therefore, the...

Study investigators examined blood samples from participants in the NYU Women’s Health Study (NYUWHS)--a cohort of 14,274 women enrolled between 1985 and 1991 through a breast cancer screening center in New York City--to identify autoantibodies associated with healthy women. The blood samples were collected at the time of enrollment and at annual screening visits until 1991 and long term follow-up...

Basal forebrain cholinergic neuron (BFCN) degeneration is an indicator of Down syndrome (DS) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The Ts65Dn (Ts) mouse model recapitulates both cognitive and morphological deficits of DS and AD, including BFCN degeneration. Therefore, this study used Ts mice to understand mechanisms underlying BFCN degeneration to identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention. They performed...

Brain metastasis is the most common intracranial malignancy in adults, which is often fatal. Studies have shown that brain metastases depend on cooperative cellular interactions between tumor cells and specialized cells within the central nervous system (CNS). Metabolic constraints imposed by the serine and glycine limited brain environment restrict metastatic tumor growth. This study showed that 3-phosphoglycerate...

This study described a unique set of deep layer neurons in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) whose spiking activity is inversely correlated with all principal cells and interneurons in all brain states, but most commonly during the down state of non-REM (NREM) sleep. They identified down state-active (DSA) neurons as deep layer neocortical neurogliaform cells that express ID2 and Nkx2.1. For this study,...

Ventrolateral area is known as a critical locus for the generation of conspecific aggression, where neurons responding during multiple phases of a social interaction. However, how these neurons organize aggressive action is still unknown. This study found that a hypothalamic-midbrain circuit that represents hierarchically organized signals during aggression. For this study, C57BL/6N, Swiss Webster,...

The discovery of grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex (mEC) encouraged investigation of the effect of the mEC on the hippocampus. Large lesions of the entorhinal cortex reduced theta oscillations, decreased the fraction of hippocampal CA1 place cells, and affected various features of place field properties. This study performed combined optogenetic and pharmacogenetic local and upstream inactivation...

Learning and memory are presumed to be supported by mechanisms that involve cholinergic transmission and hippocampal theta. This study examined the effect of sustained cholinergic activation on memory performance. For this study, they used G protein-coupled receptor activation based acetylcholine sensor to monitor acetylcholine activity during memory performance in mice. The dataset contains behavioral,...

Chemogenetic technology designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD) is a widely used experimental method to control neuronal activity with an exogenous receptor. This study virally expressed an excitatory DREADD in all inhibitory interneuron types of the CA1 region of the hippocampus in the rat. For this study, Sprague Dawley rats were used for viral injection and intracranial...

This study described robust oxytocinergic modulation of intrinsic properties and circuit operations in hippocampal area CA2. For this study, male mice were used for all experiments to avoid variation in oxytocin receptor (OXTR) expression throughout the estrous cycle of female mice. C57BL/6 mice were used in wild-type experiments, while homozygous Oxt-IRES-Cre and hemizygote Amigo2-Cre mice were used...