Ziv Williams: Encoding Social Cognition and Language in Individual Neurons and Neuronal Ensembles
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Release Date: 10/22/2024
Roshan Cools: Dopamine’s Roles in Cognitive Control, Motivation, Decision-Making, ADHD, and PD
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Dopamine is best known as a neurotransmitter involved in the experiencing of pleasure and reward, and for its role in addiction to drugs, gambling, food, etc. But dopamine is also very important in the brain’s ability to evaluate computational tradeoffs (cost versus benefit) and make decisions. In this episode Roshan Cools a Professor of cognitive neuropsychiatry at Radbout University in the Netherlands talks about how dopamine normally controls the neuronal circuits in the striatum and prefrontal cortex that regulate motivation and cognitive control. By combining PET imaging to...
info_outline
Maryanne Garry: Misinformation, Disinformation, False Memories, AI, and Our Future
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
In this episode I talk with Professor Maryanne Garry at the University of Waikato New Zealand about several interrelated realms of human cognition that are fundamental to changes in the behaviors of individuals and social groups as influenced by electronic media and artificial intelligence. Dr. Garry has devoted her career to understanding how memories of one’s past experiences can be distorted, how false information can become engrained in one’s system of beliefs. She talks about individual and collective memories, and the brain’s source monitoring systems and how they are...
info_outline
Michal Schwartz: How Immune System Cells Promote Brain Health and Recovery From Damage
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
It had long been thought that the brain was ‘immunologically privileged’ (physically separated from the immune system). However, this dogma was overturned by a series of discoveries including those made by Professor Michal Schwartz at the Weizmann Institute. In this episode I talk with Michal about the different types of immune cells that are located in ‘immunological niches’ of the brain (choroid plexus, perivascular space, meninges..) and how these cells play critical roles in maintaining normal brain health and function (neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, learning and memory)....
info_outline
Diego Mendoza-Halliday: How the Brain Stays on Task - Attention, Noise Filtering and Working Memory
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Throughout our waking hours neural networks in our brains are processing incoming information, particularly sights and sounds, integrating those inputs with stored information, making decisions, and executing responses. Staying on task requires that we attend to the details of the task while filtering out ‘noise’. In this episode I talk with Diego Mendoza-Halliday at the University of Pittsburgh about visual working memory – what it is, what neuronal circuits are involved, and how it works. His experiments involve recording of neuronal activity in prefrontal cortex and other brain...
info_outline
Thomas Hartung: Merging Brain Organoid and AI Technologies to Accelerate Basic and Applied Research
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Professor Thomas Hartung has made a major impact in biomedical research by developing and promoting alternatives to animal research. His efforts are leading to more ethical and efficient approaches to basic and applied research in the fields of environmental toxicology, drug development, and neuroscience. In this episode I talk with Thomas about two major flourishing technologies – brain organoids and artificial intelligence – and how they are being rapidly incorporated into both basic and translational research. He provides an historical perspective on the overzealous and...
info_outline
Magdalena Götz: Direct Conversion of Astrocytes Into Neurons – Progress and Therapeutic Potential
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Someday it may be possible to restore neuronal networks that have been lost or damaged by brain injury or in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. There are as many astrocytes in the human brain as there are neurons and the astrocytes generally do not die in brain injuries and neurodegenerative disorders. Professor Magdalena Götz has shown that astrocytes can be converted directly into neurons using molecular biology technologies to manipulate a few transcription factors that switch cell fate. These new neurons grow and form synapses with each...
info_outline
Antonio Di leva: Fractal Patterns and the Brain - Applications in Basic and Clinical Neuroscience
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
The Euclidean geometry that we learned in our primary education concerns man-made shapes such as rectangles, triangles, and perfect circles. However the shapes of molecules, cells, and organ systems (and their dynamic changes over time) are more complex. Some biological structures exhibit fractal geometry which is defined as “shapes and patterns that appear similar at different scales” (recursive iteration). Examples of biological structures exhibiting fractal geometry include the branches and roots of trees, blood vessels, lung airways, and the dendritic arbors of neurons. In this episode...
info_outline
Stephan Sigrist: Dietary Spermidine, Neuroplasticity, Aging, and Brain Health
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
Polyamines are small organic molecules that are acquired in the diet and can also be synthesized in cells. Spermidine is a polyamine that is increasingly recognized as playing important roles in counteracting aging. Foods with high amounts of spermidine include whole grains, broccoli, and natto (fermented soybeans). Professor Stephan Sigrist at the Free University of Berlin who is widely known for his fundamental contributions to understanding how specific proteins and their interactions control the rapid release and reuptake of neurotransmitters at the presynaptic active zone. In this...
info_outline
Jon Simons: Reality Monitoring- How the Brain Distinguishes Between Imagination and Reality
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
In the moment most people can readily distinguish between information that is coming into the brain from their senses and what information their brain is generating. However, when recalling information stored in the brain’s neuronal networks the ability to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined becomes more problematic. How does the brain keep track of what we actually experienced in the past and what we imagined happened? In this episode Jon Simons who is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge talks about his research that is...
info_outline
Keqiang Ye: From Gut to Brain – Rogue Protein Fragments in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Diseases
Brain Ponderings podcast with Mark Mattson
In this episode Emory University and Chinese Academy of Sciences Professor Keqiang Ye talks about his fascinating and ground-breaking trail of discoveries that have revealed previously unknown mechanism responsible for the production and accumulation of damaging fragments of the APP and Tau proteins in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and the alpha-synuclein protein in Parkinson’s disease (PD). He discovered an enzyme called AEP that cleaves Tau and alpha-synuclein into self-aggregating toxic fragments. Eliminating or disabling AEP can prevent the disease process and preserve brain function...
info_outlineEvery day we communicate with and influence others via language, decision-making, and actions. The complexities of human social interactions and language begs the question of how the brain processes the relevant incoming information and then generates responses so rapidly and effortlessly. Neurosurgeon Ziv Williams and his team at Harvard Medical School have made major advances in answering these questions. By recording the activities of hundreds of individual neurons in the brains of non-human primates in game-theory paradigms of social cooperation and conflict he has identified neurons in the prefrontal cortex that encode social agent identity. Moreover, by recording from neurons in the brains of human patients undergoing brain surgery his team has identified neurons involved in single elements of speech production or in the semantic encoding during language comprehension. These findings not only advance an understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of social interactions and language, but also provide insight into disorders involving alterations in these processes.
LINKS
Dr. Williams Harvard webpage
https://zivwilliams.mgh.harvard.edu/
Neuronal circuits for social decision-making
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8517320/pdf/fnins-15-720294.pdf
Social agent identity cells in the prefrontal cortex of interacting groups of primates.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8571805/pdf/nihms-1752328.pdf
Single-neuronal predictions of others' beliefs in humans.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7990696/pdf/nihms-1654341.pdf
Single-neuronal elements of speech production in humans.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10866697/pdf/41586_2023_Article_6982.pdf
Semantic encoding during language comprehension at single-cell resolution.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11254762/pdf/41586_2024_Article_7643.pdf