Publications by authors named "Nofar Ozeri-Engelhard"
Article Synopsis
- Sensory feedback is crucial for motor control, but the specific neural circuits involved are not well understood; this study focuses on the medial deep dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord as a key area for integrating proprioceptive and cutaneous signals.
- Researchers identify glycinergic inhibitory neurons that express parvalbumin in this region and demonstrate their role in processing converging sensory inputs to shape neural activity.
- By targeting these parvalbumin-expressing interneurons, the study shows they inhibit motor networks and affect limb movements, suggesting they play a significant role in coordinating smooth and contextually appropriate motor responses.
Astrocytes respond to neuronal activity and were shown to be necessary for plasticity and memory. To test whether astrocytic activity is also sufficient to generate synaptic potentiation and enhance memory, we expressed the Gq-coupled receptor hM3Dq in CA1 astrocytes, allowing their activation by a designer drug. We discovered that astrocytic activation is not only necessary for synaptic plasticity, but also sufficient to induce NMDA-dependent de novo long-term potentiation in the hippocampus that persisted after astrocytic activation ceased.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo faithfully encode complex stimuli, sensory neurons should correct, via adaptation, for stimulus properties that corrupt pattern recognition. Here we investigate sound intensity adaptation in the Drosophila auditory system, which is largely devoted to processing courtship song. Mechanosensory neurons (JONs) in the antenna are sensitive not only to sound-induced antennal vibrations, but also to wind or gravity, which affect the antenna's mean position.
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