Monday, January 6th, 2025

Time	Event
3:22a	Manipulating Environmental Affordances via Intrinsic Measurement: Evidence from Sensorimotor Brain Dynamics According to the view of ecological psychology, affordances are perceived directly through the interaction between the observer and the environment, and thus body scaled. Considering the actions from different object agent distances, Tosoni and colleagues have provided a conceptual distinction concerning two types of affordances: macro affordances (also called environmental affordance) and micro affordances. Both of these two types of affordances have been investigated in psychological research since the beginning of this century. However, most of the environmental affordances have not yet been manipulated with a body-scaled setting in the prior research protocol. Inspired by the intrinsic measurement introduced by ecological psychologist Warren (1984) and focusing on environmental affordances, the present study adapted the task of Djebbara et al. (2019) by defining transitional affordance as the body-door height ratios. The current results from subjective data, EEG data and behavioral data showed that affordance can be manipulated intrinsically and covaried with agents' experience, perception and motor interaction. The perception of environmental affordances was based on intrinsic optical information for the relationship between environmental properties and capacities of the observer's own action system. It thus provides empirical support for the need to link ecological psychology and neuro-architecture in experimental protocols. (Comment on this)
3:22a	Lack of ADAP1/Centaurin-α1 Ameliorates Cognitive Impairment and Neuropathological Hallmarks in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease ArfGAP, with dual PH domain-containing protein 1/Centaurin-(ADAP1/CentA1), is a brain-enriched and highly conserved Arf6 GTPase-activating and Ras-anchoring protein. CentA1 is involved in dendritic outgrowth and arborization, synaptogenesis, and axonal polarization by regulating the actin cytoskeleton dynamics. An increased level of CentA1 and its association with amyloid plaques in the human Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain suggest a role for this protein in AD progression. To understand the role of CentA1 in neurodegeneration, we crossbred CentA1 KO mice with the J20 mouse model of AD. We evaluated the behavioral and neuropathological hallmarks of AD and the gene expression profiles in J20 and J20 crossed with CentA1 KO mice (J20 x CentA1 KO) to determine the impact of eliminating CentA1 expression on AD-related phenotypes. Spatial memory assessed by the Morris Water Maze test showed significant impairment in J20 mice, which was rescued in J20 x CentA1 KO. Moreover, neuropathological hallmarks of AD, such as deposits of amyloid plaques and neuroinflammation, were significantly reduced in J20 x CentA1 KO. To identify potential mediators of AD phenotype rescue, we analyzed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between genotypes. We found that changes in the gene profile by deletion of CentA1 from J20 (J20 x CentA1 KO vs J20) were anti-correlated with changes caused by APP overexpression (J20 vs WT), consistent with the rescues of J20 phenotypes by CentA1 KO. In summary, our data indicate that CentA1 is required for the progression of AD phenotypes and that targeting CentA1 signaling at mitochondria might have therapeutic potential for AD prevention or treatment. (Comment on this)
8:33a	Spectral acoustic contributions to musical pleasure are dynamically shaped by autonomic neural inputs Most people enjoy music and often use music to regulate their emotions. Although pleasure derived from music-listening has been shown to be mediated by dopaminergic signals in the mesolimbic reward network, its relationship with physiology is still poorly understood. Here, we introduced time-warped representational similarity analysis (twRSA) to directly map dynamic representations of multiple modalities across variable-duration stimuli. Our method revealed that although time-varying spectral and tonal acoustic features predicted changes in autonomic neural responses (measured via cardiac, pupil, and respiratory activity) during music-listening, only a small subset was in fact relevant to listeners' on-line pleasure ratings. Despite that, we identified a weak mediation effect of physiology on shaping musical pleasure. Our results thus indicate that whilst musical pleasure may be embodied in bodily responses, the mapping between subjective experience and physiology is likely one-to-many--in line with psychological construction theories of emotion--and not one-to-one as is commonly assumed in classical basic emotion theories. (Comment on this)
8:33a	An Enhanced Conditional Variational Autoencoder-Based Normative Model for Neuroimaging Analysis Normative modelling in neuroimaging provides a powerful framework for quantifying individual deviations from expected brain measures as a function of relevant covariates. While most established approaches have focused on analysing distinct variables in isolation, there is a growing need for deep learning-based methods capable of handling multiple response variables simultaneously. Conditional variational autoencoders (cVAEs) have previously been applied in this context; however, existing inference methods still face challenges in providing reliable probabilistic predictions. In this study, we introduce an enhanced cVAE-based framework for normative modelling of neuroimaging data. Our key contribution is the development of a novel inference method that integrates latent space sampling and bootstrapping. This method directly leverages the generative nature of cVAEs to estimate the conditional distributions of brain measures. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volumes as a test case for developing, testing, and validating the model. Our dataset includes 8,551 normotensive and 18,180 hypertensive participants from the UK Biobank. We evaluated our method against three well-established and popular normative modelling techniques, including Generalised Additive Models for Location, Scale, and Shape (GAMLSS), Multivariate Fractional Polynomial Regression (MFPR), and Hierarchical Bayesian Regression (HBR). Our results indicate that the proposed cVAE-based framework achieves comparable performance across various metrics, while capturing individual deviations that correlate with the severity of hypertension. The model is particularly well-suited for high-dimensional, non-linear data, making it a robust tool for assessing individual deviations in brain structure. This enhanced normative modelling architecture paves the way for more nuanced and reliable assessments of brain health, with potential implications for personalised medicine and early detection of neurological disorders. (Comment on this)
10:35a	Vesicular glutamate release is necessary for neural tube formation The brain and spinal cord originate from a neural tube that is preceded by a flat structure known as the neural plate during early embryogenesis. In humans, failure of the neural plate to convert into a tube by the fourth week of pregnancy leads to neural tube defects (NTDs), birth defects with serious neurological consequences. The signaling mechanisms governing the process of neural tube morphogenesis are unclear. Here we show that in Xenopus laevis embryos, neural plate cells release glutamate during neural plate folding in a Ca2+ and vesicular glutamate transporter-1 (VGluT1)-dependent manner. Vesicular release of glutamate elicits Ca2+ transients in neural plate cells that correlate with activation of Erk1/2. Knocking down or out VGluT1 leads to NTDs through increased expression of Sox2, neural stem cell transcription factor, and neural plate cell proliferation. Exposure during early pregnancy to neuroactive drugs that disrupt these signaling mechanisms might increase the risk of NTDs in offspring. (Comment on this)

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