Of mice and men: Dendritic architecture differentiates human from mouse neuronal networks.

The organizational principles that distinguish the human brain from other species have been a long-standing enigma in neuroscience. Focusing on the uniquely evolved human cortical layers 2 and 3, we computationally reconstruct the cortical architecture for mice and humans. Human neurons form highly complex networks demonstrated by their increased number and simplex dimension compared to mice.

Steeper social discounting after human basolateral amygdala damage.

Translational research suggests that the basolateral part of the amygdala (BLA) computes some of the core processes underlying social preferences, but its precise role in prosocial choice remains unclear. We hypothesize that the human BLA is not necessary for prosocial behavior per se, but fine-tunes the degree of prosociality as a function of the social distance between actor and recipient of a prosocial act. We tested five participants with Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWD) who had isolated, bilateral damage to BLA and compared their behavior in a modified dictator game to that of 16 healthy control participants matched for (neuro-) psychological traits and cultural and socioeconomic background.

Projectome-based characterization of hypothalamic peptidergic neurons in male mice.

The hypothalamus coordinately regulates physiological homeostasis and innate behaviors, yet the detailed arrangement of hypothalamic axons remains unclear. Here we mapped the whole-brain projections of over 7,000 hypothalamic neurons expressing distinct neuropeptides in male mice, identifying 2 main classes and 31 types using single-neuron projectome analysis. These classes/types exhibited regionally biased soma distribution and specific neuropeptide enrichment.

Of mice and men: Dendritic architecture differentiates human from mice neuronal networks.

The organizational principles that distinguish the human brain from other species have been a long-standing enigma in neuroscience. Focusing on the uniquely evolved human cortical layers 2 and 3, we computationally reconstruct the cortical architecture for mice and humans. We show that human pyramidal cells form highly complex networks, demonstrated by the increased number and simplex dimension compared to mice.

Fear learning induces synaptic potentiation between engram neurons in the rat lateral amygdala.

The lateral amygdala (LA) encodes fear memories by potentiating sensory inputs associated with threats and, in the process, recruits 10-30% of its neurons per fear memory engram. However, how the local network within the LA processes this information and whether it also plays a role in storing it are still largely unknown. Here, using ex vivo 12-patch-clamp and in vivo 32-electrode electrophysiological recordings in the LA of fear-conditioned rats, in combination with activity-dependent fluorescent and optogenetic tagging and recall, we identified a sparsely connected network between principal LA neurons that is organized in clusters.