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Article

Hormones and Animal Communication  

Eliot A. Brenowitz

Animals produce communication signals to attract mates and deter rivals during their breeding season. The coincidence in timing results from the modulation of signaling behavior and neural activity by sex steroid hormones associated with reproduction. Adrenal steroids can influence signaling for aggressive interactions outside the breeding season. Androgenic and estrogenic hormones act on brain circuits that regulate the motivation to produce and respond to signals, the motor production of signals, and the sensory perception of signals. Signal perception, in turn, can stimulate gonadal development.

Article

Multisensory Integration and the Perception of Self-Motion  

Kathleen E. Cullen

As we go about our everyday activities, our brain computes accurate estimates of both our motion relative to the world, and of our orientation relative to gravity. Essential to this computation is the information provided by the vestibular system; it detects the rotational velocity and linear acceleration of our heads relative to space, making a fundamental contribution to our perception of self-motion and spatial orientation. Additionally, in everyday life, our perception of self-motion depends on the integration of both vestibular and nonvestibular cues, including visual and proprioceptive information. Furthermore, the integration of motor-related information is also required for perceptual stability, so that the brain can distinguish whether the experienced sensory inflow was a result of active self-motion through the world or if instead self-motion that was externally generated. To date, understanding how the brain encodes and integrates sensory cues with motor signals for the perception of self-motion during natural behaviors remains a major goal in neuroscience. Recent experiments have (i) provided new insights into the neural code used to represent sensory information in vestibular pathways, (ii) established that vestibular pathways are inherently multimodal at the earliest stages of processing, and (iii) revealed that self-motion information processing is adjusted to meet the needs of specific tasks. Our current level of understanding of how the brain integrates sensory information and motor-related signals to encode self-motion and ensure perceptual stability during everyday activities is reviewed.

Article

The Neural Basis of Behavioral Sequences in Cortical and Subcortical Circuits  

Katherine E. Conen and Theresa M. Desrochers

Sequences of actions and experiences are a central part of daily life in many species. Sequences consist of a set of ordered steps with a distinct beginning and end. They are defined by the serial order and relationships between items, though not necessarily by precise timing intervals. Sequences can be composed from a wide range of elements, including motor actions, perceptual experiences, memories, complex behaviors, or abstract goals. However, despite this variation, different types of sequences may share common features in neural coding. Examining the neural responses that support sequences is important not only for understanding the sequential behavior in daily life but also for investigating the array of diseases and disorders that impact sequential processes and the impact of therapeutics used to treat them. Research into the neural coding of sequences can be organized into the following broad categories: responses to ordinal position, coding of adjacency and inter-item relationships, boundary responses, and gestalt coding (representation of the sequence as a whole). These features of sequence coding have been linked to changes in firing rate patterns and neuronal oscillations across a range of cortical and subcortical brain areas and may be integrated in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Identification of these coding schemes has laid out an outline for understanding how sequences are represented at a neural level. Expanding from this work, future research faces fundamental questions about how these coding schemes are linked together to generate the complex range of sequential processes that influence cognition and behavior across animal species.

Article

Phantom Limbs and Brain Plasticity in Amputees  

Tamar Makin and London Plasticity Lab

Phantom sensations are experienced by almost every person who has lost their hand in adulthood. This mysterious phenomenon spans the full range of bodily sensations, including the sense of touch, temperature, movement, and even the sense of wetness. For a majority of upper-limb amputees, these sensations will also be at times unpleasant, painful, and for some even excruciating to the point of debilitating, causing a serious clinical problem, termed phantom limb pain (PLP). Considering the sensory organs (the receptors in the skin, muscle or tendon) are physically missing, in order to understand the origins of phantom sensations and pain the potential causes must be studied at the level of the nervous system, and the brain in particular. This raises the question of what happens to a fully developed part of the brain that becomes functionally redundant (e.g. the sensorimotor hand area after arm amputation). Relatedly, what happens to the brain representation of a body part that becomes overused (e.g. the intact hand, on which most amputees heavily rely for completing daily tasks)? Classical studies in animals show that the brain territory in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) that was “freed up” due to input loss (hereafter deprivation) becomes activated by other body part representations, those neighboring the deprived cortex. If neural resources in the deprived hand area get redistributed to facilitate the representation of other body parts following amputation, how does this process relate to persistent phantom sensation arising from the amputated hand? Subsequent work in humans, mostly with noninvasive neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques, have expanded on the initial observations of cortical remapping in two important ways. First, research with humans allows us to study the perceptual consequence of remapping, particularly with regards to phantom sensations and pain. Second, by considering the various compensatory strategies amputees adopt in order to account for their disability, including overuse of their intact hand and learning to use an artificial limb, use-dependent plasticity can also be studied in amputees, as well as its relationship to deprivation-triggered plasticity. Both of these topics are of great clinical value, as these could inform clinicians how to treat PLP, and how to facilitate rehabilitation and prosthesis usage in particular. Moreover, research in humans provides new insight into the role of remapping and persistent representation in facilitating (or hindering) the realization of emerging technologies for artificial limb devices, with special emphasis on the role of embodiment. Together, this research affords a more comprehensive outlook at the functional consequences of cortical remapping in amputees’ primary sensorimotor cortex.