Cortical response to naturalistic stimuli is largely predictable with deep neural networks

Science Advances
Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, activate a substantial portion of the human brain, invoking a response shared across individuals. Encoding models that predict neural responses to arbitrary stimuli can be very useful for studying brain function.

3D printing hydrogel-based soft and biohybrid actuators: A mini-review on fabrication techniques, applications, and challenges

Frontiers in Robotics and AI
This mini-review surveys existing research efforts to inspire the development of novel fabrication techniques using hydrogel building blocks and identify potential future directions. In this article, existing 3D fabrication techniques for hydrogel actuators are first examined.

Improving laser standards for three-photon microscopy

Neurophotonics
Three-photon excitation microscopy has double-to-triple the penetration depth in biological tissue over two-photon imaging and thus has the potential to revolutionize the visualization of biological processes in vivo. However, three-photon microscopy presents new technological challenges.

The effects of mechanical scale on neural control and the regulation of joint stability

International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Recent work has demonstrated how the size of an animal can affect neural control strategies. We extend that work to consider effects of mechanical scaling on the maintenance of joint integrity.

Selective postnatal excitation of neocortical pyramidal neurons results in distinctive behavioral and circuit deficits in adulthood

iScience
In genetic and pharmacological models of neurodevelopmental disorders, and human data, neural activity is altered within the developing neocortical network. This commonality begs the question of whether early enhancement in excitation might be a common driver of characteristic behaviors.

Slowly activating outward membrane currents generate input-output sub-harmonic cross frequency coupling in neurons

Journal of Theoretical Biology
The objective of this simulation study was to evaluate and quantify the effect of slowly activating outward membrane current, on the non-linearity in the output of a one-compartment Hodgkin-Huxley styled neuron.

The genie in the bottle-magnified calcium signaling in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Molecular Psychiatry
This review proposes that the special molecular mechanisms needed for higher cognitive operations confer vulnerability to dysfunction, atrophy, and neurodegeneration when regulation is lost due to genetic and/or environmental insults.

Control for multifunctionality: bioinspired control based on feeding in Aplysia californica

Biological Cybernetics
To meet the need for real-time multifunctional control, we have developed a hybrid Boolean model framework capable of modeling neural bursting activity and simple biomechanics at speeds faster than real time.

Extending the Functional Subnetwork Approach to a Generalized Linear Integrate-and-Fire Neuron Model

Frontiers in Neurorobotics
In this work, we extend our previously-developed method for tuning networks of non-spiking neurons, the “Functional subnetwork approach” (FSA), to the tuning of networks composed of spiking neurons.