Summary: Feedforward and feedback signaling involves different neural activity patterns. The findings shed new light on how the brain processes visual information.

Source: Carnegie Mellon University.

Exploring how brain areas communicate with each other is the focus of a long-standing research collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Champalimaud Research.

A quest to analyze the unique features of individual human brains evolved into the so-called Midnight Scan Club, a group of scientists who had big ideas but almost no funding and little time to research the trillions of neural connections that activate the body’s most powerful organ.

The research group started in 2013 by two neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who aimed to collect a massive amount of data on individual brains. The study’s subjects were the scientists themselves and eight others, all junior faculty or graduate students.

Most efforts to analyze connections involve scanning many brains and averaging the data across groups of people. For this study, the researchers used brain-imaging techniques to evaluate brain networks that control speech and motor function, among other activities. The researchers examined individuals while resting and performing cognitive tasks such as reading.

Objective To estimate the risks of incident mental health disorders in survivors of the acute phase of covid-19.

Design Cohort study.

Setting US department of veterans affairs.

Participants Cohort comprising 153 848 people who survived the first 30 days of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and two control groups: a contemporary group (n=5 637 840) with no evidence of SARS-CoV-2, and a historical control group (n=5 859 251) that predated the covid-19 pandemic.