Treadmill or Overground? Cognitive–Motor Interference Effects in Healthy Older Individuals Walking is increasingly understood as a cognitively demanding activity requiring the integration of sensory processing, motor control and executive functions. When combined with a concurrent cognitive task (dual-tasking), cognitive–motor interactions may lead to changes in gait, behaviour and neurophysiology. In healthy aging, reduced motor automaticity may result in greater involvement of top–down control, increasing susceptibility to cognitive–motor interference and fall risk, even in the absence of clinical impairment. To explore real-world demands, we compared dual-tasking during outdoor overground walking and during indoor treadmill walking, using behavioural assessment of cognitive task performance, mobile electroencephalography and motion tracking with wearable sensors. Thirty-six older adults performed an auditory Go/No-Go task during both walking conditions and in a seated control condition. Compared to a stationary control condition, results confirmed significant dual-task interference effects during both walking conditions, and this effect was more pronounced during overground walking. The results suggest that overground walking imposes greater demands, leading to increased competition between cognitive and motor processes for shared cognitive resources. The consideration of natural conditions helps to identify the cognitive demands of locomotion.
Emotive content and sleep enhance memory for metaphorical language Memory for emotional information is greater than for non-emotional information and is enhanced by sleep-related consolidation. Previous studies have focused on emotional arousal and valence of established stimuli, but what is the effect of sleep on newly acquired emotional information? Figurative expressions, which are pervasive in everyday communication, are often rated as higher in emotionality than their literal counterparts, but the effect of emotionality on the learning of metaphors, and the effect of sleep on newly acquired emotionally negative, positive and neutral language, is as yet poorly understood. In this study, participants were asked to memorise conventional (e.g. ‘sunny disposition’) and novel (e.g. ‘cloudy disposition’) metaphorical word pairs varying in valence, accompanied by their definitions. After a 12-hour period of sleep or wake, participants were tested on their recognition of word pairs and recall of definitions. We found higher arousal ratings were related to increased recognition and recall performance. Furthermore, sleep increased the accurate recognition of all word pairs compared to wake but also reduced the valence of word pairs. The results indicate better memory for newly acquired emotional stimuli, a benefit of sleep for memory, but also a reduction in emotional arousal as a consequence of sleep consolidation.
Molecular Disambiguation of Heart Rate Control by the Nucleus Ambiguus The nucleus ambiguus (nAmb) provides parasympathetic control of cardiorespiratory functions as well as motor control of the upper airways and esophagus. A subset of nAmb neurons innervates the heart through the vagus nerve to control cardiac function at rest and during key autonomic reflexes such as the mammalian diving reflex. Yet, how these cardiovagal nAmb neurons differ from other nAmb neurons in the adult brain remains unclear. We therefore classified adult male and female mouse nAmb neurons molecularly, anatomically, and functionally. First, our integrated analysis of single-nucleus RNA-sequencing data predicted multiple molecular subtypes of nAmb neurons. Mapping the axon projections of one nAmb neuron subtype, Npy2r-expressing nAmb neurons, showed that they innervate cardiac ganglia but not the upper airways or esophagus. Chemogenetically stimulating Npy2r + nAmb neurons robustly decreased heart rate through peripheral muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. Finally, voluntary underwater diving decreases heart rate and activates Npy2r + nAmb neurons, consistent with a cardiovagal function for this nAmb subtype. These results together reveal the molecular organization of nAmb neurons and its control of the heart rate.
Spatiotemporal remodeling in habenula marks the onset of depression-related phenotypes Chronic stress has lasting adverse consequences that can lead, over time, to depression, yet the optimal timeframe for effective therapies remains unclear. The lateral habenula (LHb) has been implicated in stress-related behavioral repercussions, but the precise timing of its contribution is not understood. Here, using spatial transcriptomics, we generated a spatially resolved molecular atlas of the LHb of male mice, revealing a topographically organized and temporally defined remodeling of gene expression after chronic stress. Longitudinal in vivo two-photon calcium imaging of individual LHb neurons revealed progressively heightened excitatory responses to aversive stimuli. These neuronal adaptations mirrored both the progression of transcriptional changes and the emergence of depression-related behavioral phenotypes and were reversed by the antidepressant ketamine. Moreover, chemogenetically limiting LHb neuronal activity or administering ketamine at the onset of these changes exerted antidepressant effects. These findings link spatiotemporal signatures of LHb neuronal ensembles and genetic landscape with the onset of stress-induced depression-related states.
Neural Representation of Associative Threat Learning in Pulvinar Divisions, Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, and Mediodorsal Thalamus in Humans Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying associative threat learning is essential for advancing behavioral models of threat and adaptation. We investigated distinct activation patterns across thalamic pulvinar divisions, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and the mediodorsal thalamus (MD) during associative threat learning using fMRI. The anterior pulvinar and MD exhibited parallel activation patterns, that may reflect distinct contributions to automatic and more deliberative learning processes. Additionally, our findings suggest a hierarchical functional organization of pulvinar activation during fear conditioning, in which coordinated activation among inferior, lateral, medial, and anterior divisions may support the integration of threat-related information. Pulvinar divisions and the MD showed activation during extinction learning and exhibited activation patterns consistent with salience processing during extinction recall and threat renewal. LGN activation patterns were consistent with feedforward visual processing. These findings extend current models of threat learning and memory by suggesting distinct patterns of thalamic involvement across associative threat learning and memory and providing a functional framework for investigating thalamic contributions to these processes.
A learning-evoked slow-oscillatory architecture paces population activity for offline reactivation across the human medial temporal lobe TMemory processing requires coordinated engagement of neuronal populations across brain networks and over time. How such coordination is organized in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) remains unclear. Here, we show that MTL population activity is dynamically structured by a transient slow-oscillatory architecture that emerges during learning to promote offline consolidation and later recall. Using intracranial recordings that combine single-neuron spiking activity and local field potentials in human participants, we find that mnemonic engagement elicits on-demand slow-oscillatory bursts in the hippocampus. These hippocampal bursts synchronize gamma-band patterns across MTL regions, defining discrete coordination events that pace cross-regional coactivity motifs during learning. These learning-evoked population motifs are selectively reactivated during hippocampal ripples in post-learning rest, and the strength of their reactivation predicts subsequent recall accuracy. Together, these findings identify a multi-scale coordination mechanism that links distributed population activity across learning, consolidation, and recall in humans.
Resistance training for migraine in females: mechanistic review of hormonal, CGRP, autonomic, vascular, and nociceptive pathways Migraine is the second leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide and disproportionately affects women, in whom the disorder tends to be more frequent, longer-lasting, and functionally more disabling than in men. This female preponderance, which emerges after menarche, is tightly linked to changes in estrogen levels, reproductive phases, and sex-specific responsiveness of the trigeminovascular and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) systems. Against this backdrop, nonpharmacological interventions that modulate the same physiological processes involved in migraine are particularly attractive. Resistance training (RT) has emerged from recent systematic reviews and network meta-analyses as one of the exercise modalities with the largest effect sizes on monthly migraine frequency, yet its mechanistic rationale in women is rarely addressed as a coherent biological argument. In this narrative review, we integrate the pathophysiology of migraine in females with the adaptations induced by structured RT across four convergent axes: autonomic regulation, neurovascular and endothelial function, systemic and neurogenic inflammation, and endogenous pain modulation. We interpret the current clinical evidence in light of these mechanisms, outline how the hormonal milieu in females may shape individual responsiveness, and propose a translational framework for prescribing RT as part of a comprehensive, sex-informed migraine management plan. We explicitly distinguish between robust findings, emerging signals and hypotheses that remain to be tested, and highlight the main methodological barriers that should be addressed before RT can be firmly embedded in clinical guidelines for women with migraine.
The turbulent brain: Modeling vortex interactions for understanding human cognition The human brain needs distributed, time-critical computation to efficiently solve complex problems. Turbulence provides such highly efficient spacetime information processing and transmission across widespread brain networks, yet we have been missing a mechanistic understanding of the interactions of turbulent vortices underlying human cognition. Here, we build the first whole-brain model of turbulent vortices as defined by the levels of local synchronization in brain signals quantifying turbulent interactions in vortex space. Specifically, using large-scale human neuroimaging data, we found that the interactions of turbulent vortices is an excellent framework for understanding cognition and brain computation. In particular, we show that when combined with connectome-based predictive modeling, this significantly predict the g-factor and the scores on the underlying tasks. In addition, turbulent vortices also distinguish the detailed spacetime dynamics of rest and cognition—and can even distinguish between subtle subcomponents of cognitive tasks, where manipulation of vortices can be shown to change cognition. Overall, this whole-brain framework creates a natural vortex space for the brain computation underlying cognition, as well as potentially providing novel ways of controlling turbulent interactions in disease.