Breaking Research News, August 30 2017

Robo-Clamp
In two separate papers published in Neuron today, scientists from Prof. Simon Schultz’s group at Imperial College, London, UK and Prof. Ed Boyden’s group at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, have designed automated robotic approaches to investigate the electrical activity of single neurons in vivo. Read the Schultz group paper summary here.

Link to Schultz group paper: Annechino et al. 2017

Link to Boyden group paper: Suk et al. 2017

Decisions-decisions

Research from Peter Rudebeke’s lab at the Icahn School of Medicine has distinguished which areas of the brain encode the value of a reward and the predictability of getting the reward when making a decision. Elegant study using peanuts and M&Ms to distinguish the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) as vital for encoding desirability of a reward and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) as necessary for encoding the availability of a reward. Read the research summary here  


Link to research paper: Rudebeck et al. 2017