In vitro and in vivo characterization of the RE-1 Silencing Transcription Factor (REST) activity under neuroinflammatory conditions

The ability to specifically target epigenetic and molecular mechanisms involved in neuronal development could be an alternative therapeutic strategy for neuroinflammatory/neurodegenerative disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The transcriptional repressor RE1-Silencing Transcription Factor (REST) regulates neurogenesis and neuronal identity through cell-specific gene repression, allowing expression of its targets in mature neurons where REST is quiescent. REST dysregulation has been implicated in several neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer and Huntington diseases, tumors of the nervous system, and epilepsy. We found that REST is overexpressed in the spinal cord of mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), suggesting that its dysregulation might be an important factor in the pathogenesis of the disease. Starting from these observations, we have firstly analyzed the expression of REST target genes in EAE and characterized the cell-specificity of REST overexpression, investigating the differential contribution of neuronal and glial cell populations to REST upregulation. Moreover, in order to mimic the inflammatory EAE scenario, we have analyzed REST activity in primary neuron cultures treated with various pro-inflammatory cytokines. Altogether, this study provides the basis for understanding the molecular mechanisms of REST expression during brain inflammation and its implication in the subsequent neurodegenerative processes

Data from: Emergence of transformation-tolerant representations of visual objects in rat lateral extrastriate cortex

Rodents are emerging as increasingly popular models of visual functions. Yet, evidence that rodent visual cortex is capable of advanced visual processing, such as object recognition, is limited. Here we investigate how neurons located along the progression of extrastriate areas that, in the rat brain, run laterally to primary visual cortex, encode object information. We found a progressive functional specialization of neural responses along these areas, with: (1) a sharp reduction of the amount of low-level, energy-related visual information encoded by neuronal firing; and (2) a substantial increase in the ability of both single neurons and neuronal populations to support discrimination of visual objects under identity-preserving transformations (e.g., position and size changes). These findings strongly argue for the existence of a rat object-processing pathway, and point to the rodents as promising models to dissect the neuronal circuitry underlying transformation-tolerant recognition of visual objects

Source data file for the article authored by Tafazoli and colleagues on invariant object representations in rat visual cortex

This data file provides the full data set processed in the article “Emergence of transformation-tolerant representations of visual objects in rat lateral extrastriate cortex” by Sina Tafazoli, Houman Safaai, Gioia De Franceschi, Federica Bianca Rosselli, Walter Vanzella, Margherita Riggi, Federica Buffolo, Stefano Panzeri and Davide Zoccolan. A detailed description of the file is provided in the companion "Readme.pdf" file