Norepinephrine-sensitive adenylate cyclases in rat brain: relation to behavior and tyrosine hydroxylase

Responses of norepiniephrine sensitive adeniosinie 3',5'-monophosphate (cyclic AMP)-generating systems in combined midbrain-striatal slices of four rat strains correlate positively with spontaneous behavioral activity and negatively with levels of midbrain and striatal tyrosine hydroxylase. Responses of cerebral cortical norepinephrine-sensitive cyclic AMP systems correlate negatively with spontaneous behavioral activity antd positively with midbrain and striatal tyrosine hydroxylase. Such correlations were not found with responses of the cyclic AMP- generatinlg systems to isoproterenol, adenosine. veratridine or of an adenosne and norepinephrine combination.     

Simultaneous study of behavior and brain waves

A technique for the simultaneous audiovisual recording of behavior and brain waves is described. The absence of muscle movement artifact, despite unlimited activity of the patient, suggests that telemetering may be adaptable for routine electroencephalography.     

Social decision-making: insights from game theory and neuroscience

By combining the models and tasks of Game Theory with modern psychological and neuroscientific methods, the neuroeconomic approach to the study of social decision-making has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment. Research has already begun to illustrate how social exchange can act directly on the brain's reward system, how affective factors play an important role in bargaining and competitive games, and how the ability to assess another's intentions is related to strategic play. These findings provide a fruitful starting point for improved models of social decision-making, informed by the formal mathematical approach of economics and constrained by known neural mechanisms.     

Challenges and opportunities in mining neuroscience data

Understanding the brain requires a broad range of approaches and methods from the domains of biology, psychology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. The fundamental challenge is to decipher the "neural choreography" associated with complex behaviors and functions, including thoughts, memories, actions, and emotions. This demands the acquisition and integration of vast amounts of data of many types, at multiple scales in time and in space. Here we discuss the need for neuroinformatics approaches to accelerate progress, using several illustrative examples. The nascent field of "connectomics" aims to comprehensively describe neuronal connectivity at either a macroscopic level (in long-distance pathways for the entire brain) or a microscopic level (among axons, dendrites, and synapses in a small brain region). The Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) encompasses all of neuroscience and facilitates the integration of existing knowledge and databases of many types. These examples illustrate the opportunities and challenges of data mining across multiple tiers of neuroscience information and underscore the need for cultural and infrastructure changes if neuroinformatics is to fulfill its potential to advance our understanding of the brain.     

Solar neutrinos: questions and hypotheses

The "solar neutrino puzzle" has been a challenge for almost 20 years, posing broad and fundamental questions about astrophysics and neutrino properties. This article sketches some of the ideas that have been put forward to solve the problem. These ideas can be grouped into two main classes: those involving changes in the standard solar model or in the basic nuclear reaction data, and those that attribute the puzzle to as yet unobserved properties of the neutrinos.