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The prefrontal cortex is a cortical area located in the anterior frontal lobe, including several subdivisions (e.g. ventromedial, dorsolateral, orbitofrontal cortices). The prefrontal cortex functions in cognitive control (e.g. planning, attention, problem-solving, error-monitoring, decision-making, social cognition, and working memory).
The regulatory mechanism and function of astrocytic epigenetic effects on depression remain to be explored. Here, the authors show astrocytic ALKBH5 contributes to depressive-like behaviors via the m6A RNA methylation of GLT-1.
The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is thought to maintain goal-relevant representations that promote cognitive control, but causal evidence has been limited. By targeting action-goal representations in LPFC with transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI, the authors found that LPFC promotes goal oriented behaviour during emotional processing. Reviewer recognition:
The neuronal mechanism of how the prefrontal cortex exerts top-down influence on the cingulo-striatal network during decision-making in depressive states is not fully understood. Here authors showed that negative bias in decision-making can be artificially induced via stimulating such neural network and they observed diminished top-down influences correlating with the depressive state.
A human fMRI study shows that defensive cardiac states moderate the neural computations of reward and threat value underlying approach-avoidance arbitration.
In this pilot study, the authors detected specific brain regions that can be precisely targeted with transcranial magnetic stimulation to influence heart rate. The heart–brain coupling might serve as a readout to identify optimal individualized transcranial magnetic stimulation targets for depression.
One of two anatomically and functionally characterized subpopulations of neurons in the mouse paraventricular thalamus forms a thalamo-corticothalamic loop with the infralimbic cortex that regulates arousal.
Certain lasting antidepressant effects of ketamine in a mouse model of depression depend on the restoration of dendritic spines in the prefrontal cortex.
Dopamine released in the rodent prefrontal cortex increases the signal-to-noise ratio of responses to aversive stimuli that are transmitted to the periaqueductal grey.