Compartment-specific plasticity in the lateral amygdala during fear learning

Local dendritic integration of synaptic inputs crucially shapes somatic output. While work in vitro has provided valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying dendritic integration, how experience affects the relationship between behaviorally relevant somatic and dendritic activity in single neurons remains largely unknown. Using deep brain two-photon Ca2+ imaging, we investigate how sensory stimuli are represented in somata and dendrites of Lateral Amygdala principal neurons and how these representations develop over the course of auditory fear learning. We observe a higher rate of dendrite-specific activity during tone presentations in naïve animals, which was abolished by chemogenetic inhibition of somatostatin-expressing interneurons, suggesting that these neurons gate dendritic integration of tone inputs. We also find that fear learning induces tone response plasticity that is bidirectional in somata but largely unidirectional in dendrites and identified a neuronal population with uncoupled somatic and dendritic plasticity of tone response. Overall, our results indicate that fear learning induces compartment-specific plasticity and suggests that inputs conveying tone information are processed locally in the amygdala during auditory fear learning

LED: curated and crowdsourced linked data on music listening experiences

We present the Listening Experience Database (LED), a structured knowledge base of accounts of listening to music in documented sources. LED aggregates scholarly and crowdsourced contributions and is heavily focused on data reuse. To that end, both the storage system and the governance model are natively implemented as Linked Data. Reuse of data from datasets such as the BNB and DBpedia is integrated with the data lifecycle since the entry phase, and several content management functionalities are implemented using semantic technologies. Imported data are enhanced through curation and specialisation with degrees of granularity not provided by the original datasets

Characterizing the Landscape of Musical Data on the Web: State of the Art and Challenges

Musical data can be analysed, combined, transformed and exploited for diverse purposes. However, despite the proliferation of digital libraries and repositories for music, infrastructures and tools, such uses of musical data remain scarce. As an initial step to help fill this gap, we present a survey of the landscape of musical data on the Web, available as a Linked Open Dataset: the musoW dataset of catalogued musical resources. We present the dataset and the methodology and criteria for its creation and assessment. We map the identified dimensions and parameters to existing Linked Data vocabularies, present insights gained from SPARQL queries, and identify significant relations between resource features. We present a thematic analysis of the original research questions associated with surveyed resources and identify the extent to which the collected resources are Linked Data-ready

c-Maf-positive spinal cord neurons are critical elements of a dorsal horn circuit for mechanical hypersensitivity in neuropathy

Corticospinal tract (CST) neurons innervate the deep spinal dorsal horn to sustain chronic neuropathic pain. The majority of neurons targeted by the CST are interneurons expressing the transcription factor c-Maf. Here, we used intersectional genetics to decipher the function of these neurons in dorsal horn sensory circuits. We find that excitatory c-Maf (c-Maf$^{EX}$) neurons receive sensory input mainly from myelinated fibers and target deep dorsal horn parabrachial projection neurons and superficial dorsal horn neurons, thereby connecting non-nociceptive input to nociceptive output structures. Silencing c-Maf$^{EX}$ neurons has little effect in healthy mice but alleviates mechanical hypersensitivity in neuropathic mice. c-Maf$^{EX}$ neurons also receive input from inhibitory c-Maf and parvalbumin neurons, and compromising inhibition by these neurons caused mechanical hypersensitivity and spontaneous aversive behaviors reminiscent of c-Maf$^{EX}$ neuron activation. Our study identifies c-Maf$^{EX}$ neurons as normally silent second-order nociceptors that become engaged in pathological pain signaling upon loss of inhibitory control

Building listening experience Linked Data through crowd-sourcing and reuse of library data

The Listening Experience Database (LED) is a project that gathers documented evidence of listening to music across cultural and historical contexts. Its underlying information system relies on the principles and practices of Linked Data, including a knowledge base that is itself a linked dataset structured according to common vocabularies for media and bibliographies such as Bibo and the Music Ontology. The data management workflow fully supports crowd-sourced input and incorporates data reuse from various sources right from the point of data collection, including the British National Bibliography dataset. The LED system gives contributors and moderators the tools to enhance these data by modelling divisions of bibliographc entries, providing information beyond the BNB schema, or aligning with other datasets by simple data reconciliation procedures. Vocabularies for music genre and instrument classes are also crowd-sourced on top of a baseline taxonomy from the DBpedia dataset. The Web frontend uses the Drupal content management system to encapsulate listening experiences into digital objects that incorporate textual information with references to literary, musical and other classes of related entities

The Listening Experience Database Project: Collating the Responses of the "Ordinary Listener" to Prompt New Insights into Musical Experience

The Listening Experience Database (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/LED) is the first project to collate and interrogate a mass of historical personal experiences of listening to music. Such accounts have previously received only isolated attention because they are challenging to locate and gather en masse. An extensive body of data about the responses of “ordinary listeners” (as opposed to professional critics) thus offers new ways of approaching music-related research. The underlying information system relies on linked data, including a knowledge base that is itself a linked dataset. The data management workflow supports both systematic contributions from the project team and crowdsourced input where knowledgeability and completeness of information can be expected to vary widely. The database demonstrates the potential of a mass of data as a robust evidential base for our understanding of how music functions in society. It also contributes a large body of structured data to the global machine-readable portion of the Web that is the Linked Data Cloud. Through crowdsourcing, it taps into knowledge that exists beyond the academic world. The project not only contributes directly to the global linked data knowledge base, but also prompts new directions for anyone investigating the reception of music, including performers, teachers, social historians, musicologists, psychologists and those working in the creative industries

Compartmentalized dendritic plasticity during associative learning

Experience-dependent changes in behavior are mediated by long-term functional modifications in brain circuits. Activity-dependent plasticity of synaptic input is a major underlying cellular process. Although we have a detailed understanding of synaptic and dendritic plasticity in vitro, little is known about the functional and plastic properties of active dendrites in behaving animals. Using deep brain two-photon Ca2+ imaging, we investigated how sensory responses in amygdala principal neurons develop upon classical fear conditioning, a form of associative learning. Fear conditioning induced differential plasticity in dendrites and somas regulated by compartment-specific inhibition. Our results indicate that learning-induced plasticity can be uncoupled between soma and dendrites, reflecting distinct synaptic and microcircuit-level mechanisms that increase the computational capacity of amygdala circuits

Modos e modas da doença e do corpo

O presente artigo busca compreender o processo da "Construção Social da Saúde" levando-se em consideração que a saúde, no decorrer da historia dos homens, foi sempre considerada um "bem" e, por isso, mereceu constante preocupação, no sentido de tornar-se geradora de modas, de modos de fazer e de existir, de conflitos, dualidades e controle social. No decorrer desse tempo, modelos de saúde foram sendo criados, interpretados e recriados, quando necessário, provocando igual processo de transformação nas maneiras de sentir, pensar e agir da população usuária dos mais variados recursos de saúde disponíveis, segundo as relações entre o "mágico e o necessário" , estabelecendo, entre os que serviam e os que eram servidos, uma relação também tão mágica quanto necessária, intermediada pelo corpo, destes sujeitos, depositário do estado de saúde ou de doença. Além do processo de transformação das mentalidades, são ainda levados em consideração os processos de construção, desconstrução e de evolução do imaginário e das representações sociais vivenciados pelos sujeitos e seus corpos. A evolução dos conhecimentos e o avanço científico-tecnológico são enfocados também como fontes modelares e comunicativas no sentido de ditar regras ao corpo que a humanidade porta socialmente neste século.The present article aims at understanding the process of "Social Construction in Health" bearing in mind that health has, along the history of mankind, been always considered a good. It has thus been of constant concern in that it becomes the generator of trends, modes of doing and existing, conflicts, dualities and social control. Along that time health models were designed, interpreted and recreated when necessary, leading to a similar transformation process in the forms of feeling and acting of the users of the most varied health resources available. This is done within the relation between the "magic and the necessary" establishing between those who serve and who were served a relation also as magic as necessary which is intermediated by the body of those subjects, depositary of health and illness states. Besides the transformation process of mentalities also taken into consideration are the processes of construction, deconstruction and evolution of the imaginary and the social representations experienced by the subjects and their bodies. The evolution of knowledge and technical and scientific advances are also focused as model and communicative sources in the sense of dictating rules to the body that humanity socially bears in this century