“Vaccines are a choice and people have the choice and will have the choice in this state as to whether or not they should take that vaccine,” the governor said.

Math teachers share advice for making remote instruction work.

With many students working remotely, there’s no point in administering assessments that ask students to come up with a single answer; it’s simply too easy to cheat.

“Vaccines are a choice and people have the choice and will have the choice in this state as to whether or not they should take that vaccine,” the governor said.

Mary Jackson's story is among those depicted in the book "Hidden Figures," which focused on the lives of black women who worked as mathematicians and engineers for NASA during the Space Race. Before landing there, Jackson worked as a math teacher in Maryland.

Acellus Learning Accelerator, used by 6,000 schools nationwide, is under fire for lessons that parents and educators have decried as racist, sexist, and age-inappropriate.

Thousands of Indiana teachers are scrambling to begin renewing their professional teaching licenses before new rules that state lawmakers approved this spring take effect July 1.

The justices declined to hear the appeal of the Ferguson-Florissant district over its at-large board elections, which lower courts invalidated as violating the Voting Rights Act.

Elvis Merzlikins is expected to start for the Blue Jackets, who are mired in a five-game losing streak and have never beaten the Kraken in regulation.

When can we expect the Islanders to get healthy?

The New Jersey Devils will face former teammates Tomas Nosek, Jesper Boqvist, AJ Greer, and Dmitry Kulikov on Tuesday night in their game against the Florida Panthers.

Governors' races in Kentucky and Mississippi took center stage, testing the political muscle of teacher activists and yielding possible policy implications for everything from public employee pensions to teacher pay.

Teachers in the nation's third-largest school system are fighting for salary increases, class-size caps, and a written commitment for more nurses, social workers, and librarians—as well as investments some say are outside the scope of collective bargaining.

The court declined to take up an appeal backed by school groups of a ruling allowing some property taxpayers challenge their assessments in federal court.

Freshman had a season-high 13 points off bench while contributing to Spartans' win over Eastern Michigan.

LSU women's basketball bucked a bit of a slow start to blowout Charleston Southern Tuesday morning.

Janiah Barker had 18 points and 11 rebounds, Lauren Betts had 17 points and 12 rebounds and the No. 5 UCLA women rolled past Pepperdine 91-54 on Tuesday. The Bruins (3-0) started the game with an 18-0 run. Ornela Muca, who led Pepperdine (1-2) with 20 points, made a 3-pointer to stop the run.

Tessa E.S. Charlesworth
Sep 11, 2019; 39:7228-7243
Viewpoints

Nora D. Volkow
Dec 1, 2001; 21:9414-9418
Behavioral

Danilo De Gregorio
Feb 3, 2021; 41:891-900
Symposium and Mini-Symposium

When faced with danger, human beings respond with a repertoire of defensive behaviors, including freezing and active avoidance. Previous research has revealed a pattern of physiological responses, characterized by heart rate bradycardia, reduced visual exploration, and heightened sympathetic arousal in reaction to avoidable threats, suggesting a state of attentive immobility in humans. However, the electrocortical underpinnings of these behaviors remain largely unexplored. To investigate the visuocortical components of attentive immobility, we recorded parieto-occipital alpha activity, along with eye movements and autonomic responses, while participants awaited either an avoidable, inevitable, or no threat. To test the robustness and generalizability of our findings, we collected data from a total of 101 participants (76 females, 25 males) at two laboratories. Across sites, we observed an enhanced suppression of parieto-occipital alpha activity during avoidable threats, in contrast to inevitable or no threat trials, particularly toward the end of the trial that prompted avoidance responses. This response pattern coincided with heart rate bradycardia, centralization of gaze, and increased sympathetic arousal. Furthermore, our findings expand on previous research by revealing that the amount of alpha suppression, along with centralization of gaze, and heart rate changes predict the speed of motor responses. Collectively, these findings indicate that when individuals encounter avoidable threats, they enter a state of attentive immobility, which enhances perceptual processing and facilitates action preparation. This state appears to reflect freezing-like behavior in humans.

The GluN3A subunit of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) plays an established role in synapse development, but its contribution to neural circuits in the adult brain is less clear. Recent work has demonstrated that in select cell populations, GluN3A assembles with GluN1 to form GluN1/GluN3A receptors that are insensitive to glutamate and instead serve as functional excitatory glycine receptors (eGlyRs). Our understanding of these eGlyRs, and how they contribute to intrinsic excitability and synaptic communication within relevant networks of the developing and the mature brain, is only beginning to be uncovered. Here, using male and female mice, we demonstrate that GluN3A subunits are enriched in the adult ventral hippocampus (VH), where they localize to synaptic and extrasynaptic sites and can assemble as functional eGlyRs on CA1 pyramidal cells. GluN3A expression was barely detectable in the adult dorsal hippocampus (DH). We also observed a high GluN2B content in the adult VH, characterized by slow NMDAR current decay kinetics and a high sensitivity to the GluN2B-containing NMDAR antagonist ifenprodil. Interestingly, the GluN2B enrichment in the adult VH was dependent on GluN3A as GluN3A deletion accelerated NMDAR decay and reduced ifenprodil sensitivity in the VH, suggesting that GluN3A expression can regulate the balance of conventional NMDAR subunit composition at synaptic sites. Lastly, we found that GluN3A knock-out also enhanced both NMDAR-dependent calcium influx and NMDAR-dependent long-term potentiation in the VH. Together, these data reveal a novel role for GluN3A and eGlyRs in the control of ventral hippocampal circuits in the mature brain.

Dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE) have been repeatedly implicated in neuropsychiatric vulnerability, in part via their roles in mediating the decision-making processes. Although two neuromodulators share a synthesis pathway and are coactivated under states of arousal, they engage in distinct circuits and modulatory roles. However, the specific role of each neuromodulator in decision-making, in particular the exploration–exploitation tradeoff, remains unclear. Revealing how each neuromodulator contributes to exploration–exploitation tradeoff is important in guiding mechanistic hypotheses emerging from computational psychiatric approaches. To understand the differences and overlaps of the roles of these two catecholamine systems in regulating exploration, a direct comparison using the same dynamic decision-making task is needed. Here, we ran male and female mice in a restless two-armed bandit task, which encourages both exploration and exploitation. We systemically administered a nonselective DA antagonist (flupenthixol), a nonselective DA agonist (apomorphine), a NE beta-receptor antagonist (propranolol), and a NE beta-receptor agonist (isoproterenol) and examined changes in exploration within subjects across sessions. We found a bidirectional modulatory effect of dopamine on exploration. Increasing dopamine activity decreased exploration and decreasing dopamine activity increased exploration. The modulatory effect of beta-noradrenergic receptor activity on exploration was mediated by sex. Reinforcement learning model parameters suggested that dopamine modulation affected exploration via decision noise and norepinephrine modulation affected exploration via sensitivity to outcome. Together, these findings suggested that the mechanisms that govern the exploration–exploitation transition are sensitive to changes in both catecholamine functions and revealed differential roles for NE and DA in mediating exploration.

In a new book, a curator at England's Natural History Museum describes rare and interesting nests and eggs—from the house sparrow to the village weaver—and the lessons they hold for avian conservation

The Smithsonian Design Triennial presents 25 commissions that explore the physical and conceptual ideas of shelter and refuge

The work, now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, tells the story of two characters on the island—the last people alive in the world

Tens of thousands of farmers are bringing in their first rice harvest just six months after one of the worst typhoons to ever hit the Philippines left their fields in [...]

In his address to the Joint Meeting of the Finance and Programme Committees this morning, the Director-General assured Members of the determination and commitment to delivery of the current Programme [...]

Building on previous efforts, the Kingdom of Morocco will offer technical assistance to the Republic of Guinea through a South-South Cooperation Tripartite Agreement signed today at FAO headquarters by FAO [...]