An increasing number of schools are replacing snow days with remote learning, but some plan to stick with the snow day tradition for now.

Data suggest low-income communities are hit much harder than affluent ones, writes researcher Heather C. Hill.

Virginia Gov.-elect Ralph Northam has said he would further restrict that state's charter laws, and New Jersey Gov.-elect Phil Murphy has promised to pull the state out of the PARCC testing consortium.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of states where how much schools will get this fall is still being debated in the state capitol.

The school board in Gwinnett County, Ga., will shift from a 4-1 white Republican majority to a 3-2 Black Democratic majority, mirroring demographic changes in the county.

Charter schools are playing a notable role in remarks about education from candidates like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Yet it's not clear what if any role they'll have in important states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

Chief technology officers are facing an unprecedented test of digital preparedness due to the coronavirus pandemic, struggling with shortfalls of available learning devices and huge Wi-Fi access challenges.

In the Green Mountain State, education leaders discuss their focus on the whole child.

The principal of an elementary school in Washington, DC, describes how she and her staff broadened the focus of the school towards broader, more holistic goals for students.

The principal of a school in Washington, DC, describes a shift toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.

The No. 4 Texas Longhorns kicked off their season with a 119-47 win over Southeast Missouri State (SEMO) on Sunday at Moody Center. This victory marked Texas' 13th consecutive home opener win, establishing a strong start to the 2024-2

Marloes J. A. G. Henckens
Aug 12, 2009; 29:10111-10119
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Robbert Havekes
Dec 12, 2012; 32:18137-18149
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Randy L. Buckner
Aug 24, 2005; 25:7709-7717
Neurobiology of Disease

We recently demonstrated that transient attenuation of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, can both prevent and reverse pain associated with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a severe side effect of cancer chemotherapy, for which treatment options are limited. Given the reduced efficacy of opioid analgesics to treat neuropathic, compared with inflammatory pain, the cross talk between nociceptor TLR4 and mu-opioid receptors (MORs), and that MOR and TLR4 agonists induce hyperalgesic priming (priming), which also occurs in CIPN, we determined, using male rats, whether (1) antisense knockdown of nociceptor MOR attenuates CIPN, (2) and attenuates the priming associated with CIPN, and (3) CIPN also produces opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). We found that intrathecal MOR antisense prevents and reverses hyperalgesia induced by oxaliplatin and paclitaxel, two common clinical chemotherapy agents. Oxaliplatin-induced priming was also markedly attenuated by MOR antisense. Additionally, intradermal morphine, at a dose that does not affect nociceptive threshold in controls, exacerbates mechanical hyperalgesia (OIH) in rats with CIPN, suggesting the presence of OIH. This OIH associated with CIPN is inhibited by interventions that reverse Type II priming [the combination of an inhibitor of Src and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)], an MOR antagonist, as well as a TLR4 antagonist. Our findings support a role of nociceptor MOR in oxaliplatin-induced pain and priming. We propose that priming and OIH are central to the symptom burden in CIPN, contributing to its chronicity and the limited efficacy of opioid analgesics to treat neuropathic pain.

Sleep is known to drive the consolidation of motor memories. During nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, the close temporal proximity between slow oscillations (SOs) and spindles ("nesting" of SO-spindles) is known to be essential for consolidation, likely because it is closely associated with the reactivation of awake task activity. Interestingly, recent work has found that spindles can occur in temporal clusters or "trains." However, it remains unclear how spindle trains are related to the nesting phenomenon. Here, we hypothesized that spindle trains are more likely when SOs co-occur in the prefrontal and motor cortex. We conducted simultaneous neural recordings in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and primary motor cortex (M1) of male rats training on the reach-to-grasp motor task. We found that intracortically recorded M1 spindles are organized into distinct temporal clusters. Notably, the occurrence of temporally precise SOs between mPFC and M1 was a strong predictor of spindle trains. Moreover, reactivation of awake task patterns is much more persistent during spindle trains in comparison with that during isolated spindles. Together, our work suggests that the precise coupling of SOs across mPFC and M1 may be a potential driver of spindle trains and persistent reactivation of motor memory during NREM sleep.

It is well established that holding information in working memory (WM) elicits sustained stimulus-specific patterns of neural activity. Nevertheless, here we provide evidence for a distinct class of neural activity that tracks the number of individuated items in working memory, independent of the type of visual features stored. We present two EEG studies of young adults of both sexes that provide robust evidence for a signal tracking the number of individuated representations in working memory, regardless of the specific feature values stored. In Study 1, subjects maintained either colors or orientations across separate blocks in a single session. We found near-perfect generalization of the load signal between these two conditions, despite being able to simultaneously decode which feature had been voluntarily stored. In Study 2, participants attended to two features with very distinct cortical representations: color and motion coherence. We again found evidence for a neural load signal that robustly generalized across these distinct visual features, even though cortically disparate regions process color and motion coherence. Moreover, representational similarity analysis provided converging evidence for a content-independent load signal, while simultaneously showing that unique variance in EEG activity tracked the specific features that were stored. We posit that this load signal reflects a content-independent "pointer" operation that binds objects to the current context while parallel but distinct neural signals represent the features that are stored for each item in memory.

Today, FAO launched two new reports in time for the 160^th session of the Council:

-          FAO + Belgium: Inclusive approaches to end hunger and promote [...]

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the event will highlight the key role of the agricultural sectors in supporting the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement, [...]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) would like to invite you to the opening ceremony of the International Year of Millets 2023