“It Always Depends on the Context”

the effect of massage therapy depends on the context

It All Depends on the Context, but Also on the Amygdala

Behavioral flexibility requires the brain to maintain and rely on cognitive contexts for dictating appropriate responses. Saez et al. (2015) demonstrate that such abstract rule-based representations co-exist in prefrontal cortices and in the amygdala, with the latter being surprisingly crucial for correct performance.

Drug Resistance always Depends on the Turnover Rate

—— Resistance to drugs is a fundamental problem in the treatment of many diseases. In this work we consider the problem of drug resistance in cancer, focusing on random genetic point mutations. A recent result obtained by Komarova is that for the case of a single drug treatment, the probability to have resistant mutants generated before the beginning of the treatment (and present, including the...

Unfair? It depends: neural correlates of fairness in social context.

Fairness is a key concept in social interactions and is influenced by intentionality considerations. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the neural correlates of fairness by focusing on responder behavior to unfair offers in an Ultimatum Game paradigm with conditions that differed in their intentionality constraints. Brain activity underlying rejection vs accept...

Striking the balance between PTEN and PDK1: it all depends on the cell context.

The phosphatidyl-inosital-3 kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway is critical for normal brain development and function and is commonly hyperactivated in brain cancer. The PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10) tumor suppressor protein and phosphate-depended kinase 1 (PDK-1) are critical regulators of this pathway. In the July 15, 2009, issue of Genes & Development, Chalhoub a...