Top Neuroscience Technology Quotes

Since 2011, there has been an estimated 25,000+ new articles published in Pubmed.gov pertaining to the words "neuron". As the list of articles continues to grow, compiling all this data into one final brain map seems like a daunting task. However, each new article typically covers the past history of the topic, so in a sense there may be thousands of research papers that are summed up in a later paper taking into account all that past research.  I would like to personally thank all the researchers for all their efforts in compiling all this data that I was able to freely access and compile.  Here are some of the quotes I found most interesting in all the research papers I have reviewed.

Favorite Quotes:

In a single cubic millimeter of brain tissue, there are some one hundred million synaptic connections between neurons. Pg. 173
Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain.
Eagleman, David New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.
(*Compare to an Intel Six-Core i7 Processor contains 14,000,000 transistors in a single cubic millimeter)

“It has been argued that it is in the period from early childhood to kindergarten in which the PFC forms the basic neural circuitry that will later underlie higher cognitive functions. Experiences early in life can therefore lay down the basic circuitry that is modified in adolescence. Early experiences (aversive or other) set up the PFC trajectories and have lifelong consequences on behavioral regulation.” pg 17187
Experience and the developing prefrontal cortex
Bryan Kolba, Richelle Mychasiuka

"Parent–infant relationships therefore can initiate long-term developmental effects that persist into adulthood"

"both studies show that a negative manipulation of parent–infant relations changes the development of PFC circuits"

"In sum, one of the most intriguing questions in behavioral neuroscience concerns the manner in which the brain, and especially the cerebral cortex, modifies its structure and function in response to experience in development. As this review has suggested, the PFC can be changed dramatically by events beginning prenatally and throughout the life span. The plasticity and prolonged development of the PFC provide an opportunity for continual modification of cognitive function but, in addition, create a potential susceptibility to the formation of abnormal circuitry, leading to compromised behavioral function"

Experience and the developing prefrontal cortex
Bryan Kolba, Richelle Mychasiuka

"Consequently, neurons responding to visual motion in a direction-selective way are found in almost all species that see. However, directional information is not explicitly encoded at the level of a single photoreceptor. Rather, it has to be computed from the spatio-temporal excitation level of at least two photoreceptors. How this computation is done and how this computation is implemented in terms of neural circuitry and membrane biophysics have remained the focus of intense research over many decades. Here, we review recent progress made in this area with an emphasis on insects and the vertebrate retina." pg 1 "As a result, the individual dendritic sectors can be considered as largely independent processing units" pg 985
Seeing Things in Motion: Models,Circuits, and Mechanisms
Alexander Borst and Thomas Euler Department of Systems and Computational Neurobiology, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology Germany

"Visual object recognition is essential for most everyday tasks, including reading, navigation, and face identification. In a small fraction of a second (approximately 150 ms), we can recognize complex shapes and categorize objects and scenes"
How cortical neurons help us see: visual recognition in the human brain
Julie Blumberg and Gabriel Kreiman sept 12, 2010

"There is a distinct possibility that we haven't yet understood what the retina is for. What if it is not merely a sharpening filter for a cable to the visual cortex? Perhaps each of the many ganglion cell types already computes something rather specific about the visual scene... Indeed, there is a well-known example of this kind of processing: the direction-selective ganglion cell."
Eye Smarter than Scientists Believed: Neural Computations in the Circuits of the Retina
Tim Gollish and Markus Meister, Max Planck Institue of Neurobiology, Harvard University, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

The detailed circuitry of the LGN, its connections, and the fact that the stimulus preferences of geniculate neurons seem identical to those of their retinal inputs make it clear that this nucleus is concerned with regulating the way in which visual information gains access to the cortex rather than with performing visual processing. The elaborate layout of the nucleus, particularly the precise segregation of different types of information and of information from different parts of the visual field suggests that the LGN is designed to perform its regulatory function extremely selectively.
Cell: Current Biology Vol 11 No 16
Andrew Derrington .

The transmission of visual information from the retina to the visual cortex through the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) is a complex process, which involves several neuronal mechanisms, elements, and circuits.
-Brainstem Input Modulates Globally the Transmission Through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus
T. OZAKI EHUD KAPLAN The Rockefeller University and The Mount Sinai School of Medicine

"fMRI studies have reported three regions in human ventral visual cortex that respond selectively to faces: the occipital face area (OFA), the fusiform face area (FFA), and a face-selective region in the superior temporal sulcus (fSTS)", "Finally, our finding that all three face-selective regions are sensitive to the external contours of faces suggests that this aspect of faces is also used for constructing the representation of faces at different stages of face processing."
Perception of Face Parts and Face Configurations
An fMRI Study Jia Liu, Alison Harris, and Nancy Kanwisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010 pg 8

"the very fact that the FFA lands in roughly the same location across subjects, along with its predominant lateralization to the right hemisphere, suggests some constraints on its development. Second, neuropsychological patients who selectively lose face-recognition abilities as a result of focal brain damage are rarely, if ever, able to relearn this ability, suggesting that the remaining visual cortex (which is adequate for visual recognition of non-face objects) cannot be trained on face recognition in adulthood"
The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces
Nancy Kanwisher and Galit Yovel. McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Israel

One of the greatest mysteries in cognitive science is the human ability to reconize visually-presented objects with high accuracy and lightening speed"
The lateral occipital complex and its role in object recognition
Kalanit Grill-Spector, Zoe Kourtzi, Nancy Kanwisher a Department of Brain and Cogniti Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Massachusetts General Hospital, NMR Center 2001 pg1

"Velocity is the temporal derivative of distance. Its measurement should therefore be localized in space and time. Unsurprisingly, visual neurons are well suited to estimate motion parameters in a relatively localized manner. For instance, in macaque monkeys directionally selective neurons in cortical area V1 with foveal receptive fields perform their computations in less than about 100 ms and across about 30 arcmin"
Can spatial and temporal motion integration compensate for deficits in local motion mechanisms?
pg 1 April 2003 Lucia M. Vaina, Norberto M. Gryzwacz, Pairash Saiviroonporn, Marjorie LeMay, Don C. Bienfang, Alan Cowey Brain and Vision Research Laboratory, Biomedical Engineering and Neurology, Boston University, Departments of Neurology, Ophthalmology and Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience Graduate Program Southern California, Department of Experimental Psychology, of Oxford South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3UD UK

"Face representation, which is believed to be processed in the temporal visual pathway, has been extensively investigated in humans and monkeys through neuroimaging and electroneurophysiology. Lesion studies in monkeys indicate that simple facial features are processed in the caudal regions, and that the combined and integrated features of the face are stored in the perirhinal cortex (PRC)."pg 1, 2012.
Distinct human face representations in the perirhinal cortex and fusiform gyrus,
Tetsuya Iidaka, Tokiko Harada, Satoshi Eifuku, Ryuzaburo Nakata, Norihiro Sadato, Department of Psychiatry, Nagoya, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japa

"Evidence from functional neuroimaging indicates that visual perception of human faces and bodies is carried out by distributed networks of face and body-sensitive areas in the occipito-temporal cortex." pg1,2013, "The visual perception of faces and bodies is crucial for successful social interaction between human beings as these two biological stimuli convey vital information on the gender, age, identity, mood, emotions, actions, and intentions of the other person."
Different Cortical Dynamics in Face and Body Perception: An MEG study
Hanneke K. M. Meeren, Beatrice de Gelder, Seppo P. Ahlfors, Matti S. Hamalainen, Nouchine Hadjikhani Cognitive Neuroscience, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusett

"What does seem pretty clear is that the development of normal adult face processing (and thus by hypothesis the development of the FFA) is constrained both anatomically and chronologically. First, the very fact that the FFA lands in roughly the same location across subjects, along with its predominant lateralization to the right hemisphere, suggests some constraints on its development. Second, neuropsychological patients who selectively lose face-recognition abilities as a result of focal brain damage are rarely, if ever, able to relearn this ability, suggesting that the remaining visual cortex (which is adequate for visual recognition of non-face objects) cannot be trained on face recognition in adulthood" pg 2121, 2006
The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces
Nancy Kanwisher, and Galit Yovel, McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

"One of the greatest mysteries in cognitive science is the human ability to recognize visually-presented objects with high accuracy and lightening speed. Interest in how human object recognition works is heightened by the fact that efforts to duplicate this ability in machines have not met with extraordinary success. What secrets does the brain hold that underline its virtuosity in object recognition? Here, we review recent findings from functional brain imaging research that provide important clues from a region of the brain that appears to play a central role in human object recognition, the lateral occipital complex. "
The lateral occipital complex and its role in object recognition
pg 1 2001, Kalanit Grill-Spector, Zoe Kourtzi, Nancy Kanwisher Department of Brain and Cogniti_e Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

"Functional neuroimaging studies have identified an interconnected occipitotemporal neural network which shows face-selective response properties and high level of specialization in processing of the facial image" "We found that the N170 amplitude was larger to opposite and same-sex nude vs. clothed bodies. Moreover, the N170 amplitude increased linearly as the amount of clothing decreased from full clothing via swimsuits to nude bodies. Strikingly, the N170 response to nude bodies was even greater than that to faces, and the N170 amplitude to bodies was independent of whether the face of the bodies was visible or not...We conclude that the early visual processing of human bodies is sensitive to the visibility of the sex-related features of human bodies and that the visual processing of other people’s nude bodies is enhanced in the brain. This enhancement is likely to reflect affective arousal elicited by nude bodies. Such facilitated visual processing of other people’s nude bodies is possibly beneficial in identifying potential mating partners and competitors, and for triggering sexual behavior." pg1, 2011"Our results thus confirm that nudity of human bodies is detected early on during visual processing, and that the human brain exhibits enhanced visual processing to other people’s nude bodies. Interestingly, the N170 response to nude bodies was even greater than that to faces, even though the N170 response to faces was at its largest on the chosen T5/T6 channels. The amplitude difference between swimsuit bodies and faces was not statistically significant. Given the sheer number of studies showing that faces elicit the most pronounced N170 amplitude, our findings showing the largest N170 amplitudes to nude bodies is somewhat surprising. Experiment 1 involved only male participants, and their N170 amplitude was greater to nude female bodies than to nude male bodies. This fits with prior findings showing that male participant’s evaluative and looking-time responses are different for same vs. opposite-sex nude bodies. We extended these findings to early visual cortical responses to body stimuli. On the contrary, stimulus sex had no effect on N170 to faces, which is compatible with previous results showing no difference in N170 responses to same-sex vs. opposite-sex faces." pg 5"We conclude that the human brain is tuned to detect sexual signals from human bodies rapidly, and that this categorization process is reflected in the face- and body-sensitive N170 component of the ERP wave. Such a perceptual ‘highway’ for processing of sexual cues is highly beneficial for triggering sexual behavior, and subsequently ensuring mating and reproduction." pg 10
The Naked Truth: The Face and Body Sensitive N170 Response Is Enhanced for Nude Bodies,
Jari K. Hietanen, Lauri Nummenmaa, Human Information Processing Laboratory, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

“A science of the mind must reduce complexities (of behavior) to their elements. A science of the brain must point out the functions of its elements. A science of the relations of mind and brain must show how the elementary ingredients of the former correspond to the elementary functions of the latter.”
William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

“One cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly 50,000 neurons, each of which establishes approximately 6,000 synapses with neighboring cells. These 300 million interconnections are highly specific: Neurons innervate some target cells but avoid others. The complexity is further amplified by the fact that neurons come in many kinds. For example, some neurons make excitatory connections, while others establish inhibitory ones. It is thought that there are well over 100 types of neurons, differing in shape, neurochemistry, and function. In action, each neuron integrates the signals from hundreds or thousands of synaptic signals, and this history determines whether or not it will send an electrical signal to its target cells. A cubic millimeter is but a minuscule part of the full circuitry, which is estimated to contain 60×1012 synaptic connections.”
Harvard University https://rc.fas.harvard.edu/case-studies/connections-in-the-brain/
faculty: Prof. J. Lichtman, Prof. H. Pfister, Prof. C. Reid

Total surface area of the cerebral cortex = 2,500 cm2 (250,000 mm2 )(2.5 ft2; A. Peters, and E.G. Jones, Cerebral Cortex, 1984)

“People who believe in God are less anxious and have less reactivity in the ACC (Inzlicht 2009). A strong belief in God acts as a buffer against anxiety and minimizes the experience of error. Religion has been shown to provide better mental and physical health and lower mortality rates. Studies show that the ACC is a critical cortical structure for the inhibition of response that is seen in anxiety. This area signals every time when some behavioral modification is needed in response to an anxiety-producing event (commission of an error, detection of conflict or the experience of uncertainty). Religious conviction acts like an anxiolytic, reducing emotional reactions to errors or uncertainty, providing people with a meaningful system helping them to understand the complex and uncertain word that we live in (Peterson, 1999). Religion gives motivation, purpose, and meaning, providing people with standards upon which to act in life. In physiological terms, it reduces ACC activity and consequently distress.”
THE ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX
D.M. Pavlovic

Researchers have discovered a sophisticated neural computer, buried deep in the cerebellum, that performs inertial navigation calculations to figure out a person's movement through space.
"These calculations are no mean feat, emphasized the researchers. The vestibular system in the inner ear provides the primary source of input to the brain about the body's movement and orientation in space. However, the vestibular sensors in the inner ear yield information about head position only. Also, the vestibular system's detection of head acceleration cannot distinguish between the effect of movement and that of gravitational force"
"After analyzing the electrical signals measured from the Purkinje cells during these movements, the researchers concluded that the specialized Purkinje cells were, indeed, computing earth-referenced motion from head-centered vestibular information."
"The researchers concluded that the output of the Purkinje cells indicates an "elegant solution" to the computational problems involved in inertial navigation."

Brain's Inertial Navigation System Pinpointed Date: June 21, 2007 Source: Cell Press

The ability to orient and navigate through the terrestrial environment represents a computational challenge common to all vertebrates ... Here we show that cerebellar cortical neuron activity in vermal lobules 9 and 10 reflects the critical computations of transforming head-centered vestibular afferent information into earth-referenced selfmotion and spatial orientation signals."
Purkinje Cells in Posterior Cerebellar Vermis Encode Motion in an Inertial Reference Frame
2007 pg 1, Tatyana A. Yakusheva,Aasef G. Shaikh,Andrea M. Green, Pablo M. Blazquez,J. David Dickman,and Dora E. Angelaki Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO

Della Santina has built a vestibular prosthesis that he hopes can someday be implanted in humans much like cochlear implants are now used to restore hearing. Instead of using a microphone to pick up sound, his system uses gyroscopes to measure movement in three dimensions. The measurements, translated to electrical impulses, would be delivered to the three vestibular nerves that emanate from the three semicircular canals, much like audio signals are delivered to the auditory nerve in cochlear implants.
"Neurons receiving such inputs effectively function as adaptive processors that are able to assume different functional states according to the task being executed."

Top-down influences on visual processing
Charles D. Gilbert1 and Wu Li2 May 2013

“Parallel processing of visual information begins at the first synapse in the retina between the photoreceptors and bipolar cells.”
Characterization of a novel large-field cone bipolar cell type in the primate retina: Evidence for selective cone connections
HANNAH R. JOO, BETH B. PETERSON, TONI J. HAUN, AND DENNIS M. DACEY Department of Biological Structure and the National Primate Research Center University Seattle Washington

“The smooth-pursuit system must interact with the vestibular system to maintain the accuracy of eye move- ments in space during head movement. Maintenance of a target image on the foveae is required not only during head rotation which activates primarily semi-circular canals but also during head translation which activates otolith organs. The caudal part of the frontal eye Welds (FEF) contains pur- suit neurons. The majority of them receive vestibular inputs induced by whole body rotation.”
Otolith inputs to pursuit neurons in the frontal eye fields of alert monkeys Teppei Akao · Sergei Kurkin · Junko Fukushima · Kikuro Fukushima 2008

“Here we present for the mouse inner plexiform layer—the main computational neuropil region in the mammalian retina—the dense reconstruction of 950 neurons and their mutual contacts… We characterize a new type of retinal bipolar interneuron and show that we can sub divide a known type based on connectivity. Circuit motifs that emerge from our data indicate a functional mechanism for a known cellular response in a ganglion cell that detects localized motion, and predict that another ganglion cell is motion sensitive.”
Connectomic reconstruction of theinner plexiform layer in the mouse retina.
Moritz Helmstaedter, Kevin L. Briggman, Srinivas C. Turaga, Viren Jain, H. Sebastian Seung, Winfried Denk

“Conclusion: Internal models provide a firm computational foundation from which theories of the cerebellum can be considered. We have reviewed the evidence that the cerebellum contains inverse or forward models of the motor system. By considering the possibility that the cerebellum contains multiple pairs of forward and inverse models, we believe that the benefits of both views can be retained and integrated. Such a paired system would results in computational advantages in both motor learning and control.”
Internal models in the cerebellum
Daniel M. Wolpert, R. Chris Miall and Mitsuo Kawato 1998

“kinaesthesia, the senses of limb position and limb movement, has been prompted by recent new observations on the role of motor commands in position sense. Peripheral receptors which contribute to kinaesthesia are muscle spindles and skin stretch receptors. Joint receptors do not appear to play a major role at most joints. The evidence supports the existence of two separate senses, the sense of limb position and the sense of limb movement. Receptors such as muscle spindle primary endings are able to contribute to both senses. While limb position and movement can be signaled by both skin and muscle receptors, new evidence has shown that if limb muscles are contracting, an additional cue is provided by centrally generated motor command signals. Observations using neuroimaging techniques indicate the involvement of both the cerebellum and parietal cortex in a multi-sensory comparison, involving operation of a forward model between the feedback during a movement and its expected profile, based on past experience. Involvement of motor command signals in kinaesthesia has implications for interpretations of certain clinical conditions.”
The kinaesthetic senses.
Uwe Proske and Simon C. Gandevia. Department Physiology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia 2 Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute and University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW2031, Australia

"Vision is an active process, where higher order cognitive influences affect the operations performed by cortical neurons.."
Top-down influences on visual processing
Charles D. Gilbert1 and Wu Li2 May 2013

“Brain circuits process information through specialized neuronal subclasses interacting within a network. Revealing their interplay requires activating specific cells while monitoring others in a functioning circuit." pg1
“By triggering inhibition and measuring its effects on connected cells in the functioning cortex, we have shown the computational impact of different forms of inhibition on sensory processing.” pg 2

Division and subtraction by distinct cortical inhibitory networks in vivo
Nathan R. Wilson,Caroline A. Runyan, Forea L. Wang, and Mriganka Sur, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Understanding the structure and function of the neocortical microcircuit requires a description of the synaptic connectivity between identified neuronal populations."
"The neocortex is a 6-layered structure which is functionally organized into columns. Understanding the wiring diagram of a cortical column has received much attention in recent years” Pg1

Specificity of Synaptic Connectivity between Layer 1 Inhibitory Interneurons and Layer 2/3 Pyramidal Neurons in the Rat Neocortex
Christian Wozny and Stephen R. Williams, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge

"Visual and vestibular signals converge onto the dorsal medial superior temporal area (MSTd) of the macaque extrastriate visual cortex, which is thought to be involved in multisensory heading perception for spatial navigation...MSTdneurons respond selectively to heading and not to changes in orientation relative to gravity. In support of a role in heading perception, MSTdvestibular responses are also dominated by velocity-like temporal dynamics, which might optimize sensory integration with visual motion information. Unlike the cerebellar vermis, however, MSTd neurons also carry a spatial orientation-independent rotation signal from the semicircular canals, which could be useful in compensating for the effects of head rotation on the processing of optic flow"
Vestibular Signals in Macaque Extrastriate Visual Cortex Are Functionally Appropriate for Heading Perception
Sheng Liu and Dora E. Angelaki Department of Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 2009 pg1

"Area MST was the first area reported to have large-field, complex-motion-sensitive responses. It remains the most studied area in the context of self-motion.", pg 394, " When VIP is electrically activated with pulse trains of fairly long duration and moderately large intensities, stereotyped face, shoulder, and arm movements result, which strongly resemble normal defensive movements"
Mechanisms of Self-Motion Perception
Kenneth H. Britten, Center for Neuroscience and Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California

 The deep and intermediate layers of the superior colliculus (DLSC) integrate multimodal sensory information about environmental stimuli to allow for rapid reflex-like responses to potential threats (Stein et al., 2009). DLSC functions in a larger network that includes the periaqueductal gray (PAG), inferior colliculus (IC), amygdala, and hypothalamus. This network has been well characterized in rodents, and has been referred to as the “brain aversion system.” Activation of this network can evoke defense-like behaviors (e.g., freezing, cringing, cowering and escape) -Defense-Like Behaviors Evoked by Pharmacological Disinhibition of the Superior Colliculus in the Primate

The Human Connectome Project is hard at work producing images such as this, using an MRI technique known as diffusion tensor imaging. With 100 billion neurons, each with around 10,000 connections, mapping the human brain will be no easy feat, and charting every single connection could take decades. The HCP will tackle the lowest hanging fruit first: charting the major highways between different brain regions, and showing how these connections vary between individuals. To do this they will combine several imaging tools including something called diffusion MRI, which maps the structure of the white matter that insulates the "wires" of the brain, and also resting-state MRI, which measures how brain regions oscillate in unison as a result of shared connections. NewScientist
"Through a series of complex transformations, the pixel-like input to the retina is converted into rich visual perceptions that constitute an integral part of visual recognition... We discuss how neurophysiological recordings in the macaque monkey and in humans can help us understand the computations performed by the visual cortex" pg 1
How cortical neurons help us see: visual recognition in the human brain
Julie Blumberg


"Combining systematic studies of the neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of the visual system in human and non-human animal models is providing new understanding of some of the computations performed in the visual cortex." pg 1
How cortical neurons help us see: visual recognition in the human brain
Julie Blumberg and Gabriel Kreiman sept, 12 2010

"Initially working in cats, and subsequently in monkeys, they discovered that neurons in V1 typically respond to bars shown at a specific orientation within their receptive fields (17, 76, 77). The receptive field size for V1 neurons is typically below one degree of visual angle. Their responses are tuned to the orientation of the bar; this type of response is similar to the type of operations used in computer vision to extract the edges of an image "
How cortical neurons help us see: visual recognition in the human brain
Julie Blumberg and Gabriel Kreiman sept 12, 2010

"Figure 2 shows another single unit located in the right anterior hippocampus of a different patient. This unit was selectively activated by pictures of the actress Halle Berry as well as by a drawing of her (but not by other drawings; for example, picture no. 87). This unit was also activated by several pictures of Halle Berry dressed as Catwoman, her character in a recent film, but not by other images of Catwoman that were not her (data not shown). Notably, the unit was selectively activated by the letter string ‘Halle Berry’. Such an invariant pattern of activation goes beyond common visual features of the different stimuli"
Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain
R. Quian Quiroga1,2†, L. Reddy1, G. Kreiman3, C. Koch1 & I. Fried2,4

The recognition process likely entails a sequence of computations across visual cortex, starting from local computations in early visual cortex related to low-level properties of the visual stimulus, such as disparity, motion, or orientation, conveying little sense of the global object shape, then proceeding to more global computations in higher levels of the hierarchy of visual processing."
Representation of Shapes, Edges, and Surfaces Across Multiple Cues in the Human Visual Cortex
Joakim Vinberg1 and Kalanit Grill-Spector 2008

Human visual cortex comprises 6 billion neurons that are organized into more than a dozen distinct functional areas. The entirety of human cortex occupies a surface area on the order of 1000 cm2 and ranges between 2 and 4mm in thickness. Each cubic millimeter of cortex contains approximately 50 000 neurons so that neocortex in the two hemispheres contain on the order of 30 billion neurons. Human visual cortex includes the entire occipital lobe and extends significantly into the temporal and parietal lobes. Visual cortex contains on the order of 4.
B A Wandell, S O Dumoulin, and A A Brewer 2009

There are 1.5 million optic nerve fibers from each eye in macaque and only 1 million such fibers in humans. The large size of human visual cortex is likely not a result of an increase in the supply of information but, rather, due to an increase in visual processing and the organization and delivery of information to other parts of cortex, such as those devoted to language and reading. Given these differences in visual cortex size, it would not be surprising that many features of human visual cortex are not present in closely related primate systems."
Visual Cortex in Humans
B A Wandell, S O Dumoulin, and A A Brewer 2009

The number of neurons in human visual cortex far exceeds the number in many other species that depend on vision. For example, the surface area of macaque monkey visual cortex is probably no more than 20% that of human visual cortex"
Visual Cortex in Humans
B A Wandell, S O Dumoulin, and A A Brewer 2009

"The dominant thinking for the past 30 years assumes that each extrastriate map represents a computational specialization"
Visual Cortex in Humans
B A Wandell, S O Dumoulin, and A A Brewer 2009

Our findings do lend support to the hypothesis that visual cortex is organized at a large scale into a number of clusters that share common functional response properties"... "Importantly, maps that belong to a cluster are characterized by similar functional computations to mediate common perceptual processes."
Retinotopic Organization of Human Ventral Visual Cortex
pg 10651. Michael J. Arcaro, Stephanie A. McMains, Benjamin D. Singer, and Sabine Kastner 1Department of Psychology, 2Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, and 3Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton,New Jersey 08540

"While many areas of the brain have demonstrated roles in trans- mitting and integrating energy balance signals, the hypothalamus is pivotal. This small region of the limbic system also has a central role in mediating stress responses, regulating body temperature, thirst and sleep, and establishing circadian rhythms. It is bordered by the third ventricle and the highly vascularized median emi- nence, an area with a porous blood-brain barrier. This makes it ideally positioned to sense and respond to a myriad of circulating hormones and nutrients."
Serotonin and the regulation of mammalian energy balance
March 2013 Michael H.Donovan and Laurence H.Tecott DepartmentofPsychiatry,University of California San Francisco CA

"Most connections between visual areas consist of both feedforward and feedback connections, indicating that there is a high degree of interactive processing.
PRIMARY VISUAL CORTEX AND VISUAL AWARENESS
Frank Tong Department of Psychology, Princeton University

"Virtually all information that reaches the cerebral cortex must first pass through the thalamus, and yet the thalamus is often seen as a simple machine-like relay. This suggests that nothing would be lost if information were passed directly from peripheral receptors, such as the retina, to the neocortex. However, the known complexity of thalamic circuitry points strongly to a significant role for thalamic processing, and details about that role have emerged during the past decade or so, showing that the thalamus can dynamically alter the information relayed in a manner that reflects various behavioural states, such as attention and drowsiness."
The role of the thalamus in the flow of information to the cortex pg 1, 2002,
S. Murray Sherman and R. W. Guillery Department of Neurobiology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, Department of Anatomy, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine

"Our findings do lend support to the hypothesis that visual cortex is organized at a large scale into a number of clusters that share common functional response properties"
Retinotopic Organization of Human Ventral Visual Cortex
Michael J. Arcaro, Stephanie A. McMains, Benjamin D. Singer, and Sabine Kastner Department of Psychology, Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior, and Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University

MT adds little to the raw direction and speed tuning already found in V1, but researchers still think it plays a role in computing the motion of whole objects or patterns." pg 168, "The idea that MTdeals only with segmentation and integration might have sufficed up until the mid 1990s, but since then, a series of remarkable studies has made it clear that MT is involved in the computation of structure (although the first evidence for this fact dates back to Siegel & Andersen 1988). The sensitivity of MT neurons to speed gradients; the correlation between MT responses and the perception of 3D cylinders; and the remarkable integration of direction, speed, and disparity gradients all make a compelling case that MTis processing motion but doing more than computing the direction and speed of motion."pg 180
Structure and Function of Visual Area MT
Richard T. Born and David C. Bradley Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School 2005

Figure 2 shows another single unit located in the right anterior hippocampus of a different patient. This unit was selectively activated by pictures of the actress Halle Berry as well as by a drawing of her (but not by other drawings), This unit was also activated by several pictures of Halley Berry dressed as Cat woman, her character in a recent film, but not by other images of Cat woman that were not her. Notably, the unit was selectively activated by the letter string “Halle Berry”.
Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain (test on real humans with epilepsy who had been implanted with depth electrodes)
R. Quian Quiroga, L. Reddy, G. Kreiman, C. Koch, I. Fried.

"The deep and intermediate layers of the superior colliculus (DLSC) integrate multimodal sensory information about environmental stimuli to allow for rapid reflex-like responses to potential threats. DLSC functions in a larger network that includes the periaqueductal grey (PAG), inferior colliculus (IC), amygdala, and hypothalamus. This network has been well-characterized in rodents, and has been referred to as the “brain aversion system”. Activation of this network can evoke defense-like behaviors (e.g., freezing, cringing, cowering and escape) that include increased sympathetic arousal (e.g., increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration)"
Defense-like behaviors evoked by pharmacological disinhibition of the superior colliculus in the primate
Jacqueline T. DesJardin, Angela L. Holmes, Patrick A. Forcelli, Claire E. Cole, John T. Gale, Laurie L. Wellman, Karen Gale, and Ludise Malkova Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, Georgetown University Medical Center, The Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, 2013, pg1

The apparent capacity of DA neurones to signal events that are “better” or “worse” than expected(reward prediction errors) has captured the imagination of both the neuroscience and computational communities pg 6
Interactions between the midbrain superior colliculus and the basal ganglia
Peter Redgrave, Veronique Coizet, Eliane Comoli, John G. McHaffie, Mariana Leriche, Nicolas Vautrelle,Lauren M. Hayes and Paul Overton

1 Neuroscience Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield Sheffield UK, Joseph Fourier University Grenoble France3 Department of Physiology, School of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine In order to see clearly when a target is moving slowly, primates with high acuity foveae use smoothpursuit and vergence eye movements. The former rotates both eyes in the same direction to track target motion in frontal planes, while the latter rotates left and right eyes in opposite directions to track target motion in depth. Together, these two systems pursue targets precisely and maintain their images on the foveae of both eyes. During head movements, both systems must interact with the vestibular system to minimize slip of the retinal images" pg 1, "The goal of the pursuit system is to keep the retinal target image on the fovea by matching the eye velocity in space (i.e., gaze velocity) to target velocity" pg 2
The vestibular-related frontal cortex and its role in smooth-pursuit eye movements and vestibular-pursuit interactions
Junko Fukushimaa,b, Teppei Akaoa, Sergei Kurkina, Chris R.S. Kanekoc, and Kikuro Fukushimaa, Department of Physiology, Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, 060-8638, Japan, Department of Physiology & Biophysics & Washington National Primate Research Center, University of Washington

Projections from the peripheral field representation of V2 to parietal areas could provide a direct route for rapid activation of circuits serving spatial vision and spatial attention." pg 1
Cortical Projections of Area V2 in the Macaque
1997 Ricardo Gattass, Aglai P. B. Sousa, Mortimer Mishkin and Leslie G. Ungerleider, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21941, Brazil and Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD 20892 USA

"Here we report functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence that the EBA is strongly modulated by limb (arm, foot) movements to a visual target stimulus, even in the absence of visual feedback from the movement. Therefore, the EBA responds not only during the perception of other people’s body parts, but also during goal-directed movements of the observer’s body parts." pg 1
Extrastriate body area in human occipital cortex responds to the performance of motor actions
Serguei V Astafiev, Christine M Stanley, Gordon L Shulman, Maurizio Corbetta, Departments of Radiology, Neurology and Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri

"Finally, aside from dorsal V4, the retinotopic organization of macaque early visual cortex (V1, V2, V3, V3A, and ventral V4) is remarkably similar to that observed in human fMRI studies. This finding indicates that early visual cortex is mostly conserved throughout hominid evolution." pg 1 So far, however, not a single human fMRI study has provided any evidence of a robust retinotopic organization within the topological human equivalent of monkey V4d. Our experiments exclude technique-related explanations for this functional interspecies difference. Furthermore, in New World monkeys, which diverged from the Hominidae much earlier than the Old World monkeys, both dorsal and ventral V4 have a similar retinotopic organization compared with that of V4v in humans and monkeys. Together with the present data, this suggests that human and macaque V4d, but not the remainder of early visual cortex, have evolved differently during about 25 million years of separation." pg 7404
The Retinotopic Organization of Primate Dorsal V4 and Surrounding Areas: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study in Awake Monkeys,
Denis Fize, Wim Vanduffel, Koen Nelissen, Katrien Denys,Christophe Chef d’Hotel,Olivier Faugeras, and Guy A. Orban, Laboratorium voor Neuro- en Psychofysiologie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Gasthuisberg, Leuven B-3000, Belgium, Massachusetts General, Hospital/Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Harvard Medical School Athinoula A. Martino’s Center for Biomedical Imaging, Equipe Odysse´e, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), INRIA-Sophia-Antipolis, BP93, 06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex,

Proprioception: The sense or perception, usually at a subconscious level, of the movements and posture of the body and especially its limbs, independent of vision. This sense is mediated by sensory nerve terminals in muscles and tendons (muscle spindles) and the fibrous capsule of joints combined with input from the vestibular apparatus."
Dorsal and Ventral Streams in the Sense of Touch
pg 1 2008, Esther P Gardner, Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine

"The posterior parietal cortex (PPC), historically believed to be a sensory structure, is now viewed as an area important for sensory-motor integration. Among its functions is the forming of intentions, that is, high-level cognitive plans for movement. There is a map of intentions within the PPC, with different subregions dedicated to the planning of eye movements, reaching movements, and grasping movements. These areas appear to be specialized for the multisensory integration and coordinate transformations required to convert sensory input to motor output"
INTENTIONALMAPS IN POSTERIOR PARIETAL CORTEX,
Richard A. Andersen and Christopher A. Buneo, Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology

"The classical view that there are only two motor areas is wrong... Motor and parietal areas are reciprocally connected and form a series of specialized circuits working in parallel. These circuits transform sensory information into action. They are the basic elements of the motor system." pg 283,"The most effective stimuli for many PE neurons are specific combinations of multiple joint positions or combinations of joint and skin stimuli. Recently, Lacquaniti et al. (1995) provided evidence that many neurons in area PE encode the location of the arm in space in a body-centered coordinate system. The main role of PE-F1 (M1) circuits (Fig. 2A) appears to be that of providing F1 with information on the location of body parts necessary for the control of movement of limbs and other body parts." pg 286
The organization of the cortical motor system: new concepts
1998, pg1, G. Rizzolatti*, G. Luppino, M. Matelli Istituto di Fisiologia Umana, Universita` di Parma, via Gramsci 14, I-43100 Parma, Italy

"The posterior parietal cortex of the macaque contains a multiplicity of areas involved in the analysis of visual information necessary for motor planning and execution of eye, limb, and body movements", "The rich parietofrontal connections of these areas mediate the transformation of visual information into action, and a series of parietofrontal circuits has been so far identified, linking visually related areas of the caudal superior parietal lobule (SPL) and of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) with different sectors of the agranular frontal cortex or with the frontal eye fields. These circuits are involved in the visual guidance of reaching, grasping, or eye movements"
Cortical Connections of the Inferior Parietal Cortical Convexity of the Macaque Monkey
Stefano Rozzi, Roberta Calzavara1, Abdelouahed Belmalih, Elena Borra, Georgia G. Gregoriou2, Massimo Matelli and Giuseppe Luppino Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Sezione di Fisiologia, Universita` di Parma, I-43100 Parma, Italy 1Current address: Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

"There is overwhelming evidence that areas in the IPS are involved in complex hand use, reaching, grasping, matching visual and body centered frames of references for reaching and grasping, and programming intentional hand movements.", 2011, pg 1,
Topographic Maps within Brodmann’s Area 5 of Macaque Monkeys
Adele M. H. Seelke1, Jeffrey J. Padberg2, Elizabeth Disbrow1,3, Shawn M. Purnell1, Gregg Recanzone1,4 and Leah Krubitzer, Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA, Department of Biology, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR 72035, USA and, Department of Neurology, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA

"Although recent findings support the existence of functionally distinct parietal regions for controlling reach-to-grasp movements, the overlap between these parietal regions may also reflect the different functional and computational constraints that need to be satisfied when planning reach-to-grasp movements."2011, pg 7
Specialization of reach function in human posterior parietal cortex
M. Vesia Department of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo ON Canada

“Mirror neurons are a particular class of visuomotor neurons,originally discovered in area F5 of the monkey premotor cortex, that discharge both when the monkey does a particular action and when it observes another individual (monkey or human) doing a similar action” pg169
“In the case of humans, there is another faculty that depends on the observation of others’ actions: imitation learning. Unlike most species, we are able to learn by imitation, and this faculty is at the basis of human culture.” pg169
“There are two classes of visuomotor neurons in monkey area F5: canonical neurons, which respond to the presentation of an object, and mirror neurons, which respond when the monkey sees object-directed action. In order to be triggered by visual stimuli, mirror neurons require an interaction between a biological effector (hand or mouth) and an object.” Pg170
“Thus, the mirror system transforms visual information into knowledge” pg172

THE MIRROR-NEURON SYSTEM
Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laila Craighero Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Sezione di Fisiologia, via Volturno, Universit`a di Parma, 43100, Parma, Italy

"The confluence of these properties at this particular apex of the “what” and “where” pathways support the hypothesis that STPa plays a crucial function in the integration of spatial and form information and its transfer onto motor planning regions to guide or plan grasping and other reaching movements to moving objects in the environment." pg9, 2007
Three-dimensional structure-from-motion selectivity in the anterior superior temporal polysensory area, STPa, of the behaving monkey,
Kathleen C. Anderson* and Ralph M. Siegel, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey

"Optic flow provides an important visual cue to the estimation of self-motion (egomotion; Gibson 1950; Warren et al. 1988). However, in the mammalian brain, vestibular and somatosensory signals are integrated with visual information to compute egomotion parameters. In macaques, there is much evidence that areas MST and VIP are involved in encoding visual cues for egomotion and are also sensitive to vestibular and somatosensory cues" pg1, 2009
Sensitivity of Human Visual and Vestibular Cortical Regions to Egomotion-Compatible, Visual Stimulation,
Velia Cardin and Andrew T. Smith, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London

"Increased activation in the area of the VTA was also seen during cocaine and heroin rush. The finding that heroin addicts experience orgasmic pleasure with heroin usage fits with the notion that the VTA is the key element in both heroin and sexual orgasm. The present findings may represent an anatomical substrate for the strongly reinforcing nature of sexual activity in humans. Because ejaculation introduces sperm into the female reproductive tract, it would be critical for reproduction of the species to favor ejaculation as a most rewarding behavior."
Brain Activation during Human Male Ejaculation,
2003 pg 9189, Gert Holstege, Janniko R. Georgiadis, Anne M. J. Paans, Linda C. Meiners, Ferdinand H. C. E. van der Graaf, and A. A. T. Simone Reinders, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Positron Emission Tomography Centre and Departments of Radiology, Neurology, and Biological Psychiatry, University Hospital Groningen, The Netherlands

“The visibility of sex-related human body features changes the affective and motivational significance of the stimulus and would thus result in enhanced engagement of the fronto-insular-temporal network, particularly of the IC (Insular Cortex) which has been implicated in the integration of internal motivational drives with external stimuli.” Pg 108
“Female stimuli elicited greater N1 responses than male stimuli across both genders”… Considering that the enhancement in the processing of nude vs. clothed bodies can be accounted for by affective arousal, subsequent triggering of sexual behavior, and the ultimate purpose of reproduction.”
“We conclude that the visibility of sexual features strongly facilitates the early cortical processing of human bodies, and that this is reflected in enhanced activity in a distributed network, including body processing areas, such as the EBA and FBA, as well as affective-motivational areas, such as the IC and ACC. The purpose of such a neural boost is presumably to trigger sexual behavior and ultimately ensure reproduction.” Pg 109

Facilitated early cortical processing of nude human bodies
Jussi Alho, Nelli Salminen, Mikko Sams, Jari K. Hietanen, Lauri Nummenmaa, Brain an dmind laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and biomedical Engineering, Aalto University Finland

"The sensation of taste originating from receptors distributed on the tongue and oral cavity of rodents is first carried to the rostral portion of the nucleus of the solitary tract (NST) by axons of the VIIth, IXth, and Xth cranial nerves. From the NST, ascending gustatory fibers project to third-order cells within the parabrachial nuclei (PbN) of the and in turn to multiple forebrain nuclei, including the ventrobasal thalamus (VPMpc), insular cortex (IC), lateral hypothalamus (LH), central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA), and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) "2004, pg1
Modulation of Parabrachial Taste Neurons by Electrical and Chemical Stimulation of the Lateral Hypothalamus and Amygdala.
Cheng-Shu Li, Young K. Cho, and David V. Smith Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee; and Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, College of Dentistry, Kangnung National University, Kangwon-do, Korea

This representation of face part information is consistent with the OFA acting as the Wrst stage in a distributed network for face perception in which face computations of increasing complexity, such as identity and facial expression discrimination, are performed at higher levels of cortex" - 2011 pg 1.
The role of the occipital face area in the cortical face perception network
David Pitcher · Vincent Walsh · Bradley DuchaineInstitute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

"Our ability to perceive the visual environment is remarkable: we can recognize a scene within a fraction of a second, and use that information to seamlessly navigate. Given the ecological importance of scene perception and navigation, it is perhaps not surprising then that particular regions of the human brain are specialized for processing visual information about scenes, including the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the retrosplenial complex (RSC), and a region near the transverse occipital sulcus, formerly referred to as “TOS”, but for reasons outlined in the Discussion, henceforth called the “occipital place area” (OPA)." 2013, pg1
The Occipital Place Area Is Causally and Selectively Involved in Scene Perception
Daniel D. Dilks, Joshua B. Julian, Alexander M. Paunov, and Nancy Kanwisher McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

"The results of a conjunction analysis of brain activity showed that, of the several areas that were active with each type of stimulus, only one cortical area, located in the medial orbito-frontal cortex (mOFC), was active during the experience of musical and visual beauty, with the activity produced by the experience of beauty derived from either source overlapping almost completely within it. The strength of activation in this part of the mOFC was proportional to the strength of the declared intensity of the experience of beauty. We conclude that, as far as activity in the brain is concerned, there is a faculty of beauty that is not dependent on the modality through which it is conveyed but which can be activated by at least two sources–musical and visual–and probably by other sources as well. This has led us to formulate a brain-based theory of beauty
Toward A Brain-Based Theory of Beauty 2011,Tomohiro Ishizu, Semir Zeki

"Attractive faces that were more consistently rated by subjects as displaying a happy expression, produced stronger responses in the region compared to faces that were displaying a neutral expression.. Given that medial orbitofrontal cortex is associated with representing stimulus-reward value, it may be that the reward value of a face is much enhanced when that face is smiling at the observer (even if subtly as is the case with the stimulus set used here). The presence of a smile may provide an important signal that a reward is or is not attainable." 2003, pg 153,
Beauty in a smile: the role of medial orbitofrontal cortex in facial attractiveness
J. O’Doherty, J. Winston, H. Critchley, D. Perrett, D.M. Burt, R.J. Dolan a Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, 12 Queen Square, London WC1 3BG, UK b School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JU, UK c Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London NW3 2PF, UK

"As recipient of diverse signals, the AM nucleus is in a key position to link pathways associated with emotions, and may be an important interface for systems associated with retrieval of information from long-term memory in the process of solving problems within working memory. Finally, the internal segment of the globus pallidus (GPi) issued projections to AM, suggesting direct linkage with executive systems through the basal ganglia. The diverse connections of the AM nucleus may help explain the varied deficits in memory and emotions seen in neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases affecting the anterior thalamic nuclei."
Pathways for emotions and memory II. Afferent input to the anterior thalamic nuclei from prefrontal, temporal, hypothalamic areas and the basal ganglia in the rhesus monkey
D. Xiao b, H. Barbas,a Department of Health Sciences, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 431, Boston, MA 02215, USA b Program in Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA c New England Regional Primate Research Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Turning to prefrontal regions, among adults, the OFC and ACC circuitry modulates behavior by influencing attention to emotional stimuli, including fearful or other negative facial expressions. Across development, the OFC and ACC show functional, anatomical, and physiological changes in adolescence and by early adulthood, and these regions have been implicated in the maturation of attentional and emotional processes, such as goal-directed attention to emotionally evocative stimuli found greater OFC and ACC activation in adolescents than in adults when passively viewing fearful versus neutral faces, as well as greater OFC activation in adults than in adolescents when focusing on emotional versus nonemotional aspects of fearful faces. As a whole, the literature indicates that, like the amygdala, the fusiform gyrus, the hippocampus, the ACC, and the OFC are involved in facial emotion processing and the limited developmental studies of these regions suggest possible age-related changes in fearful-face processing.Recent work indicates that between-group differences in amygdala response to facial emotions are associated with between-group differences in functional connectivity among specific brain regions in adolescent anxiety patients as well as healthy adults. A recurrent theme in theories of brain development is that adolescence is a time of neural refinement via synaptic pruning, myelination, and regulatory processes that may strengthen interconnections among brain circuits. In theory, behavior is the net result of functional interactions among a highly integrated network of subcortical–subcortical and subcortical–cortical regions associated with the human response to emotional stimuli. Because this is the first study of developmental differences in functional connectivity during face processing, we viewed these analyses as exploratory. However, we were particularly interested in amygdala connectivity with cortical and subcortical temporal regions, such as the fusiform gyrus and the hippocampus, given their associations with face processing. Pg4.
A Developmental Examination of Amygdala Response to Facial Expressions
Amanda E. Guyer, Christopher S. Monk, Erin B. McClure-Tone, Eric E. Nelson, Roxann Roberson-Nay, Abby D. Adler, Stephen J. Fromm, Ellen Leibenluft, Daniel S. Pine, and Monique Ernst

"Patients with strokes in the territory of the middle cerebral artery (primary motor and premotor areas) cannot produce a symmetrical, voluntary smile, nevertheless can smile normally in response to jokes (Monrad-Krohn, 1924; Hopf et al., 1992; Dawson et al., 1994; Töpper et al., 1995; Trepel et al., 1996). These findings suggest the existence of an alternative “limbic” pathway that controls facial expressions. Indeed, patients with strokes in the territory of the anterior cerebral artery, affecting the midcingulate area, are able to make voluntary facial movements but are unable to produce spontaneous emotional expressions (amimia) (Wilson, 1924; Feiling, 1927; Karnosh, 1945). "
"The amygdalo-motor pathways and the control of facial expressions"
Katalin M. Gothard*

“These results suggest that specific orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal areas exert a direct influence on the hypothalamus and may be important for the autonomic responses evoked by complex emotional situations”
Topographic Organization of Connections Between the Hypothalamus and Prefrontal Cortex in the Rhesus Monkey, pg1
N.L. REMPEL-CLOWER AND H. BARBAS Department of Health Sciences, Boston University

“The human face is an engineering marvel. Underneath our skin, a large number of muscles allow us to produce many configurations. The face muscles can be summarized as Action Unit defining positions characteristic of facial expressions of emotion. These face muscles are connected to the motor neurons in the cerebral cortex through the corticobulbar track.” Pg 1591
A Model of the Perception of Facial Expressions of Emotion by Humans:Research Overview and Perspectives
Aleix Martine, Shichuan Du Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The OhioState University

(Spirit/Flesh Network) “It is pretty safe to suggest that if early experiences dramatically alter PFC circuitry and behavior in laboratory animals, such as rats, the experiences are likely to have even larger effects in a more complexly organized PFC, such as in humans.” Pg 17186
“It has been argued that it is in the period from early childhood to kindergarten in which the PFC forms the basic neural circuitry that will later underlie higher cognitive functions (12). Experiences early in life can therefore lay down the basic circuitry that is modified in adolescence. Early experiences (aversive or other) set up the PFC trajectories and have lifelong consequences on behavioral regulation.”
“It is now clear that even fairly innocuous-looking experiences can profoundly affect brain development and that the range of experiences that can alter brain development is much larger than had once been believed” Pg 17187

Experience and the developing prefrontal cortex,
Bryan Kolba, Richelle Mychasiuka, Arif Muhammada, Yilin Lia, Douglas O. Frost, and Robbin Gibba

"Moreover, orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices target the ventral pallidum and the extended amygdala, through which high-order association areas may activate motor autonomic structures for the expression of emotions." -pg1, 2001,
NEURAL INTERACTION BETWEEN THE BASAL FOREBRAIN AND FUNCTIONALLY DISTINCT PREFRONTAL CORTICES IN THE RHESUS MONKEY
H. T. GHASHGHAEI and H. BARBAS, Department of Health Sciences, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

"Hence, the amygdala and orbital prefrontal cortex act as part of an integrated neural system guiding decision-making and adaptive response selection." pg 1, 2000, -pg 4317"As mentioned at the outset, humans with damage to either of these areas are impaired in using information about the likely consequences of their actions to guide their behavior. This is true not only in their personal lives in which they often make disastrous social and financial decisions, but also as indexed by performance in a laboratory-based “gambling task”
Control of Response Selection by Reinforcer Value Requires Interaction of Amygdala and Orbital Prefrontal Cortex,
Mark G. Baxter, Amanda Parker, Caroline C. C. Lindner, Alicia D. Izquierdo, and Elisabeth A. Murray, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, and Department of Psychology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052


(Renewal) "The major effect of Ach upon neurons of the cerebral cortex is... a prolonged reduction of potassium conductance so as to make cortical neurons more receptive to other excitatory inputs. Cortical cholinergic pathways also promote long-term potentiation and experience-induced synaptic remodelling."pg 2255, 1998,
Trajectories of cholinergic pathways within the cerebral hemispheres of the human brain
Nathan R. Selden Darren R. Gitelman. Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center, Northwestern University medical School, Chicago, Ilinois.

"It can now be recognized that the region (Orbital and Medial Prefrontal Cortex) as a whole recieves highly processed sensory afferents, provides for cortical influence over visceral functions, and participates in high-level cognitive and emotional processes." pg 1, 2000.
The Organization of Networks within the Orbital and Medial Prefrontal Cortex of Rats, Monkeys and Humans.
D. Ongur and J.L. Price. Dept of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110 USA

"The visceral nervous system, in turn, is composed of sensors for internal conditions and effectors controlling body homeostasis. These viscerosensory neurons are located in the blood vessels, airways or digestive tract monitoring the internal partial pressurn (pO2es of oxyge) and carbon dioxide (pCO2), blood pH, organ stretch and, last but not least, taste, and produce cardiovascular, respiratory and digestive responses." pg1, 2013
Somatic and Visceral nervous systems- an ancient duality
Bertucci and Arendt BMC Biology

"Given the complexity and diversity of necessary computations, it is perhaps not surprising that many cortical and subcortical areas in the brain are involved in decision making. In addition, there is a substantial variability in the decision-making strategies displayed by different individuals, and many psychiatric disorders, including mood disorders and substance abuse, are thought to result from decision-making abilities impaired in some aspects." pg 1, 2011,
"In the last decade, substantial progress has been made in uncovering the basic mechanisms of decision making, including how the brain synthesizes incoming sensory information and the decision maker’s previous reward history to select the action that is most beneficial to the subject (3–9).
This knowledge is essential for understanding the precise nature of dysfunctions in the decision-making circuitries in the brain, including those responsible for impulsive choice behaviors. This review first describes the range of computations required for optimal decision making." pg 2

"Many of our actions are habitual and they are often generated automatically and rapidly without much deliberation. Often, in order to produce most appropriate behaviors, such automatic and habitual behaviors must be first suppressed."
Prefrontal Cortex and Impulsive Decision Making,
Soyoun Kim and Daeyeol Lee, Department of Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine Department of Psychology, Yale University

“Decision-making is a complex human behavior, dependent on the integrity of frontal networks. As noted, three frontal circuits have been associated with decision making: 1) the OFC and limbic pathways, directed toward reward and affective-based decisions; 2) the DLPFC, specialized for integrating multiple sources of information; and 3) the ACC, important in sorting among conflicting options, as well as outcome-processing.” Pg 267
The Functional Neuroanatomy of Decision-Making
Michael H. Rosenbloom, M.D. Jeremy D. Schmahmann, M.D. Bruce H. Price, M.D.

"The subcortical brain region most often associated with the neural processing of anxiety and threat is the amygdala. It is essential for initial processing of emotional memory and arousal, fast evaluation of novel stimuli and threat perception. Electrical stimulation of the amygdala has been shown to elicit fear, anxiety and social withdrawal and to increase the stress response via cortisol release. Lesions within the amygdala compromise face processing and judgment of trustworthiness in social context, impair the recognition of fear and increase social anxiety", pg 1, 2011,
"Receiving input from higher-order sensory cortices, the amygdala appears to have a centre or gate function in a hub of connections associated with the perception, evaluation and response to threatening and socially relevant stimuli", pg2
"Hyperactivation of the amygdala in response to facial expressions is one of the most reproduced findings in patients with social anxiety disorder", pg 3
"Anxiety disorder patients had a significantly lower functional connectivity between the left amygdala and left medial orbitofrontal cortex as well as the left posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC/precuneus," pg 4 The OFC is involved in the engagement of interpersonal relationships, moral behavior and social aggression. Lesions within the medial orbitofrontal cortex enhance the response to stressors or fear conditions stimuli resulting in severe impairments in social behavior and difficulties in identifying social signals from facial and voice expressions"

Reduced resting-state functional connectivity between amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in social anxiety disorder
Andreas Hah, Patrycja Stein, Christian Windischberge, Andreas Weissenbacher, Christoph Spindelegger, Ewald Moser, Siegfried Kasper, Rupert Lanzenberger, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Division of Biological Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, Austria MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria

"Research in animals and adult humans implicates a circuit connecting the amygdala and ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) in social-threat processing.7,8 Animal studies have shown that this fear circuitry is shaped by developmental experiences that may chronically affect social-threat perception.",pg2, 2008,
Amygdala and Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Function During Anticipated Peer Evaluation in Pediatric Social Anxiety
Amanda E. Guyer, PhD, Jennifer Y. F. Lau, PhD, Erin B. McClure-Tone, PhD, Jessica Parrish, BA, Nina D. Shiffrin, BS, Richard C. Reynolds, MS, Gang Chen, PhD, R. J. R. Blair, PhD, Ellen Leibenluft, MD, Nathan A. Fox, PhD, Monique Ernst, MD, Daniel S. Pine, MD, and Eric E. Nelson, PhD Mood and Anxiety and Scientific and Statistical Computing Core, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland; Department of Psychology, Georgia State University; Department of Psychology, Catholic University, Washington, DC; and Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

"Key components of fear circuitry including the amygdala (and its subnuclei), nucleus accumbens (including bed nucleus of stria terminalis BNST), hippocampus, ventromedial hypothalamus, periaqueductal gray, a number of brain stem nuclei, thalamic nuclei, insular cortex, and some prefrontal regions"pg 1, 2010,
"Extinction learning occurs when a CS that previously predicted a US no longer does so, and over time, the conditioned response (eg, freezing or elevated skin conductance responses) decreases. Extinction learning or, more likely, the later recall of this learning involves the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)",pg3

The Neurocircuitry of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety Disorders
Lisa M Shin and Israel Liberzon, Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Psychiatry Service, Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; 4Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

"The maturing brain during fetal life and infancy may be particularly susceptible to adverse influences. For instance, early separation from caregivers, abuse, neglect, or social deprivation in infancy or early childhood can produce enduring behavioral and neurocognitive deficits"... In the cerebral cortex, functional domains such as visual processing, attention, memory, and cognitive control rely on the development of distinct yet interconnected sets of anatomically distributed cortical and subcortical regions. The developmental organization of these circuits is a remarkably complex process that is influenced by genetic predispositions, environmental events, and neuroplastic responses to experiential demand that modulates connectivity and communication among neurons, within individual brain regions and circuits, and across neural pathways." .. "Similarly, animal studies have shown that maternal care influences behavior and future parenting of offspring"..."Similarly, a growing body of longitudinal neuroimaging data describes age-related changes in morphological features and functional organization of the brain throughout childhood and adolescence, although the precise correlates of these observations at the cellular and molecular level are largely speculative." ... "MRI findings in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) reveal delays in the time course of cortical maturational, with peak cortical thickness attained later than in typically developing children, particularly in anterior temporal and prefrontal cortices" ..."Children with OCD, for example, perform poorly on tasks of inhibitory control, and these deficits correlate with clinical symptoms (Maia et al, 2008). Anatomical and functional neuroimaging studies suggest that abnormalities in orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, and anterior cingulate cortex disrupt the functioning of frontostriatal circuits"
Normal Development of Brain Circuits
Gregory Tau, and Bradley S Peterson Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA

“Our laminar SST mRNA measurements showed greatest reduction in layer II in people with schizophrenia, consistent with previous studies showing reduced gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic neuron density in layer II in other cortical areas in schizophrenia”(Inhibitory neurons) pg 5
Relationship between somatostatin and death receptor expression in the orbital frontal cortex in schizophrenia: a postmortem brain mRNA study
Deiesh Joshi, Vibeke S Catts

"There are now substantial data indicating that structural, cellular and molecular differences exist between the male and female brains in regions that are important for cognition, memory and affect, such as the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Some of these differences may have clinical relevance, as marked disparities in disease incidence, manifestation, prognosis and treatment have been observed between the sexes."
Sex differences, gonadal hormones and the fear extinction network: implications for anxiety disorders
Kelimer Lebron-Milad and Mohammed R Milad, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

“Human imaging studies have reported that activity in several brain areas represents the values of both rewards and punishments…The lateral habenula, a brain structure located in the epithalamus, is in a good position to represent emotional and motivational events. It receives inputs from forebrain limbic regions and projects to midbrain structures, such as the substantia nigra pars compacta and ventral tegmental area which contain dopamine neurons, and the raphe nuclei which contain serotonin neurons. Thus, the lateral habenula could control the monoaminergic (especially dopaminergic and serotonergic) systems which influence emotion and motivation. Indeed, electrical stimulation of the lateral habenula inhibits dopamine and serotonin neurons. Consistent with this view, the lateral habenula has been implicated in many emotional and cognitive functions including anxiety, stress, pain, learning and attention. In a recent study, we showed that neurons in the lateral habenula respond to rewards and sensory stimuli predicting rewards, and that they send these reward-related signals to dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra by inhibiting them.” Pg1
Representation of negative motivational value in the primate lateral habenula
Masayuki Matsumoto1 and Okihide Hikosaka1 1Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

Several studies have investigated the brain areas associated with emotional aspects of pain. Baliki et al. showed that patients with persistent back pain had greater functional connectivity between the medial PFC (mPFC) and NAc [27]. Since the mPFC and NAc are involved in emotion, motivation, and reward-related behaviors, this suggests that the processing of pain perception can be influenced by changes in these functional connections. Hashmi et al. also suggested that regions involved in processing emotions, such as the mPFC and amygdala, are associated with the chronification of pain [28]. Changes in emotion, motivation, and reward-related circuits of the brain (which encode emotional features of pain) may cause disorders associated with emotion in chronic pain conditions.
Chronic Pain: Structural and Functional Changes in Brain Structures and Associated Negative Affective StatesSeoyon Yang
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650904/

“We've all heard the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Now neuroscientists are beginning to explain the science behind the adage.”
“The brain is made up of two types of cells -- inhibitory and excitatory neurons. Networks of these two kinds of neurons are responsible for processing sensory information like images, sounds and smells, and for cognitive functioning. About 80 percent of neurons are excitatory. Traditional scientific tools only allowed scientists to study the excitatory neurons.”

Researchers discover how inhibitory neurons behave during critical periods of learning- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/cmu-rdh082313.php
Carnegie Mellon University

“Throughout the neocortex, form and function of neural circuitry are shaped by experience. This sensitivity to experience is most pronounced during adolescence, and has been studied most extensively in the primary visual cortex”pg 1.
A disinhibitory microcircuit initiates critical-period plasticity in the visual cortex
Sandra J. Kuhlman, Nicholas D. Olivas..

Differences sexes “Sex differences in typical developmental brain trajectories are highly relevant for studies of pathology. Robust sex differences in developmental trajectories were noted for nearly all structures, with GM volume peaks generally occurring 1–3 years earlier in females” pg 339
“Cerebellum volume peaks about 2 years later than cerebral volume and is the only structure we have quantified that remains significantly larger in males after covarying for total cerebral volume” pg 336
“The amygdala is a key component of circuitry involved in assessing salience, or the importance of environmental stimuli to survival. The hippocampus is involved in memory storage and retrieval. Connections between the amygdala and hippocampus result in enhanced memory for stimuli with high salience” pg 338

The Teen Brain: Insights from Neuroimaging
Jay N. Giedd, M.D.