To recognize objects, the human visual system processes information through a network of hierarchically organized brain regions. Many neurocomputational models have modeled this hierarchical structure, but they have often used hand-crafted features to model early visual areas. According to the linear efficient coding hypothesis, the goal of the early visual pathway is to capture the statistical...

Long-term potentiation of human pain perception (nociceptive LTP) to single electrical test stimuli was induced by high-frequency stimulation (HFS) of cutaneous nociceptive afferents. Numerical pain ratings and a list of sensory pain descriptors disclosed the same magnitude of nociceptive LTP (23% increase for >60 min, P < 0.001), whereas affective pain descriptors were not significantly enhanc...

A recent study illustrating the importance of sensory influences on inhibition of return (IOR) found stimuli biased towards the parvocellular (P) pathway produced greater IOR while stimuli biased towards the magnocellular (M) pathway produced less IOR (Brown, 2009; Guenther & Brown, 2007). The present study used a different sensory manipulation (temporal onset/offset) to further explore this re...

BACKGROUND Synaesthesia is a neurological condition which manifests clinically as an involuntary experience of a sensory or cognitive pathway upon stimulation of a second unrelated sensory or cognitive pathway CASE PRESENTATION We report a 55 year old male who presented with a life-long history of grapheme-colour synaesthesia in which the triggering grapheme was the double letter 'll' (a gemi...

The cAMP pathway plays a critical role in synaptic plasticity. We assessed using the ectopic expression of octopamine (OA) receptor, the contribution of the cAMP pathway to short-term facilitation of sensory-motor synapses in Aplysia. When synaptic connections were depressed to 20-30% of their initial EPSP amplitude, the application of OA to sensory cells expressing OA receptor showed significa...

It is unclear whether intrinsic excitabilities of specific interneurons are modulated by sensory experiences. Here, I examined the intrinsic excitabilities of interneurons in "sensory-spared" and "sensory-deprived" cortices of GAD67-GFP mice. The results showed that whisker trimming, begun at postnatal day 7 for 3 wk, induced significant changes in intrinsic and firing properties of fast-spikin...

Researchers have long been interested in identifying a final, common pathway for psychosis. The existence of such a pathway is implied by the fact that various drug intoxications, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, psychotic depression, severe sensory deprivation, and Alzheimer’s disease can all cause similar psychotic phenomena. Fueling the interest in finding a common pathway is the possibi...

During neurogenesis in Drosophila, groups of ectodermal cells are endowed with the capacity to become neuronal precursors. The Notch signaling pathway is required to limit the neuronal potential to a single cell within each group. Loss of genes of the Notch signaling pathway results in a neurogenic phenotype: hyperplasia of the nervous system accompanied by a parallel loss of epidermis. Echinoi...