Ketamine-Induced Oscillations in the Motor Circuit of the Rat Basal Ganglia

Oscillatory activity can be widely recorded in the cortex and basal ganglia. This activity may play a role not only in the physiology of movement, perception and cognition, but also in the pathophysiology of psychiatric and neurological diseases like schizophrenia or Parkinson's disease. Ketamine administration has been shown to cause an increase in gamma activity in cortical and subcortical structures, and an increase in 150 Hz oscillations in the nucleus accumbens in healthy rats, together with hyperlocomotion

Improving multisensory user experience through olfactory stimuli

More and more modern digital applications allow users to make experiences that elicit their senses. More traditional applications allow users to make visual and sound experiences. Recently, the sense of touch has been introduced to enrich the users’ experiences with digital worlds. The sense of smell is equally important for enriching and making the experiences engaging, but has been mostly neglected so far, mostly because of the limited knowledge about olfaction and of olfactory technologies. This chapter presents a methodology for the development of applications including multisensory user experiences based also on the sense of olfaction. The methodology has been used and tested for the development of applications in various sectors, which are reported in the chapter

Characterization of spatio-temporal epidural event-related potentials for mouse models of psychiatric disorders

Distinctive features in sensory event-related potentials (ERPs) are endophenotypic biomarkers of psychiatric disorders, widely studied using electroencephalographic (EEG) methods in humans and model animals. Despite the popularity and unique significance of the mouse as a model species in basic research, existing EEG methods applicable to mice are far less powerful than those available for humans and large animals. We developed a new method for multi-channel epidural ERP characterization in behaving mice with high precision, reliability and convenience and report an application to time-domain ERP feature characterization of the Sp4 hypomorphic mouse model for schizophrenia. Compared to previous methods, our spatio-temporal ERP measurement robustly improved the resolving power of key signatures characteristic of the disease model. The high performance and low cost of this technique makes it suitable for high-throughput behavioral and pharmacological studies