Timescales of Local and Cross-Area Interactions during Neuroprosthetic Learning
Dorsal/Ventral, blah blah? The ventral stream travels a “slower” route, resulting in the time delay.
Dissect Relationships Between Gene Co-expression and Functional Connectivity in Human Brain
There are many different phenotypes of naturally occurring brain construction. The psychiatric concept of “normal or disordered” pathologizes many of these naturally occurring phenotypes, to the detriment of society as a whole. This study is interesting because it found specific subclasses we can use to look at the whole of human brain function, rather than this limited scope of “normal or disordered” (even though it is still using the “disordered” lens).
The major subgroups they found was “Global” signalling, “Inter-unit” signalling, “Local” signalling, and “Signalling Speed” and “Coherent Signalling”. My instinct is there are probably a few more, but these units are probably great places to start redefining the breadth of human brain construction, and move away from the harmful construct of “normal or disordered”.
Interestingly, this study also lends weight to the idea that of the most common psychiatric conditions, only “schizophrenia” likely has a definition which produces a consistent etiological result.
Congenital Hypothyroidism and Brain Development: Association With Other Psychiatric Disorders
This is a bit of a tangent, but hypothyroidism is an indicator of hypothalamic dysfunction. We are going to be seeing a lot more about hypothalamic function over the next year, I guarantee it.
Extrinsic control and intrinsic computation in the hippocampal CA1 circuit
Yet another dagger in the heart of top down control. We are going to be able to forge an Iron Throne out of all the daggers in top down theory pretty soon. CA1 continuing to fire (CA2 should as well, however it does not need to use the EC buffer as it can draw from the SuM) indicates that cortical circuits are indeed downstream of hippocampal function. It would have been really interesting to see the effect of CA2 silencing as well, as it would have firmed up the circuit biases of the hippocampal transform.