Glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK3β), primarily described as a regulator of glycogen metabolism, is a molecular hub linking numerous signaling pathways and regulates many cellular processes like cytoskeletal rearrangement, cell migration, ap...
The origin of spontaneous preference for dietary lipids in humans and rodents is debated, though recent compelling evidence has shown the existence of fat taste that might be considered a sixth taste quality. We investigated the implication of gustat...
The last decades have seen a proliferation of music and brain studies, with a major focus on plastic changes as the outcome of continuous and prolonged engagement with music. Thanks to the advent of neuroaesthetics, research on music cognition has br...
Obesity presents a major health hazard of the 21st century. It promotes co-morbid diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, certain types of cancer, and osteoarthritis. Excessive energy intake, physical inactivity, and...
This review, focused on food addiction (FA), considers opinions from specialists with different expertise in addiction medicine, nutrition, health psychology, and behavioral neurosciences. The concept of FA is a recurring issue in the clinical descri...
Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) profoundly impacts individuals and society, driven by neurobiological adaptations that sustain chronicity and relapse. Emerging research highlights neuroinflammation, particularly microglial activation, as a central mechani...
Advancing treatment to resolve human cognitive disorders requires a comprehensive understanding of the molecular signaling pathways underlying learning and memory. While most organ systems evolved to maintain homeostasis, the brain developed the capa...
Intense physical activity and dieting are core symptoms of anorexia nervosa (AN). Their combination evolves into compulsivity, leading the patient into an out-of-control spiral. AN patients exhibit an altered activation of nucleus accumbens (NAc), re...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders and frequently co-occur concomitantly. Individuals suffering from this dual diagnosis often exhibit increased symptom severity and poorer tr...
Depression, the most prevalent psychiatric disorder in the Western world, is characterized by increased negative affect (i.e., depressed mood, cost value increase) and reduced positive affect (i.e., anhedonia, reward value decrease), fatigue, loss of...
The dorsal fronto-striatal circuit, particularly the pathway connecting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and caudate, constitutes a core neural system for cognitive control and goal-directed behavior. While ovarian hormone fluctuations are...
Binge eating disorder (BED) is a prevalent eating disorder lacking adequate pharmacological interventions. This review examines the therapeutic potential of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), medications approved for type 2 diabete...
When “hijacked” by compulsive behaviors that affect the reward and stress centers of the brain, functional changes in the dopamine circuitry occur as the consequence of pathological brain adaptation. As a brain correlate of mental health,...
Despite the overlapping neural circuits underlying natural and drug rewards, several studies have suggested different behavioral and neurochemical mechanisms in response to drug vs. natural rewards. The strong link between hippocampal theta oscillati...
In this article, we propose a circuit to imitate the behavior of a Reward-Modulated spike-timing-dependent plasticity synapse. When two neurons in adjacent layers produce spikes, each spike modifies the thickness in the shared synapse. As a result, t...
Observing familiar (known, recognisable) and socially relevant (personally important) faces elicits activation in the brain’s reward circuit. Although smiling faces are often used as social rewards in research, it is firstly unclear whether familiari...
This paper proposes a GateRL that is an automated circuit design framework of CMOS logic gates based on reinforcement learning. Because there are constraints in the connection of circuit elements, the action masking scheme is employed. It also reduce...
The functional interplay between the corticolimbic GABAergic and opioidergic systems plays a crucial role in regulating the reward system and cognitive aspects of motivational behaviors leading to the development of addictive behaviors and disorders....
Food can help release and promote neurotransmitters. As a result, the food’s effect in this regard is of great interest to individuals who have experienced dysregulation of the brain reward circuit due to addiction to drugs or other substances....
Chronic pain has been increasingly recognized not only as a sensory disorder but also as a condition that profoundly disrupts affective and motivational processes. Preclinical research indicates that persistent nociceptive input drives maladaptive ch...
This study applies reinforcement learning to search parameter regimes that yield chaotic dynamics across six systems: the Logistic map, the Hénon map, the Lorenz system, Chua’s circuit, the Lorenz–Haken model, and a custom 5D hyper...
Artificial sweeteners, or non-caloric sweeteners (NCSs), are widely consumed as sugar substitutes to reduce energy intake and manage obesity. Once considered inert, accumulating evidence now shows that NCSs interact with host physiology, altering gut...
Observations using invasive neural recordings from patient populations undergoing neurosurgical interventions have led to critical breakthroughs in our understanding of human neural circuit function and malfunction. The opportunity to interact with p...
Adolescence is characterized both by the exacerbation of the experience of anxiety, fear or threat, on one hand, and by increased reward seeking (reward sensitivity) and risk taking on the other hand. The rise of these apparently opposite processes,...
Identified across multiple psychiatric disorders, the dopamine (DA) transporter (DAT) Ala559Val substitution triggers non-vesicular, anomalous DA efflux (ADE), perturbing DA neurotransmission and behavior. We have shown that DAT Val559 mice display a...
Substance abuse is a fundamentally dynamic disease, characterized by repeated oscillation between craving, drug self-administration, reward, and satiety. To model nicotine addiction as a control system, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-compatible n...
Evidence from human and animal studies has shown that maternal overnutrition and/or obesity are linked with neurobehavioral changes in the offspring. This fetal programming is characterized by adaptive responses to changes in the nutritional state du...
The ability to respond flexibly to changing environmental circumstances is a hallmark of goal-directed behavior, and compromised flexibility is associated with a wide range of psychiatric conditions in humans, such as addiction and stress-related dis...
The circadian system interacts with the mesocorticolimbic reward system to modulate reward and memory in a time-of-day dependent manner. The circadian discrimination of reward, however, remains difficult to address between natural reinforcers and dru...
The prevalence of patients suffering from mental disorders is substantially increasing in recent years and represents a major burden to society. The underlying causes and neuronal circuits affected are complex and difficult to unravel. Frequent disor...
Clinical and animal studies suggest that multiple brain systems are involved in mediating reward-motivated and related emotional behavior including the consumption of commonly used drugs and palatable food, and there is evidence that the repeated ing...
Obesity and overweight are a major public health problem globally. Diet quality is critical for proper child development, and an unhealthy diet is a preventable risk factor for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as obesity. Consumption of sugar-sw...
Brain stimulation therapies may be used to correct motor, social, emotional, and cognitive consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Neuromodulation applied with anatomical specificity can ameliorate desired symptoms while leaving functional circ...
The habenular complex is a diencephalic structure divided into the medial and lateral divisions that lie within the epithalamus of most vertebrates. This brain structure, whose activities are mainly regulated via inputs/outputs from and to the stria...
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health concern. Each year, over 50 million individuals worldwide suffer from TBI, and this leads to a number of acute and chronic health issues. These include affective and cognitive impairment, as well as an i...
This paper proposes a reinforcement learning-based approach that optimises bus and line control methods to solve the problem of short circuit currents in power systems. Expansion of power grids leads to concentrated power output and more lines for la...
In grid-connected inverter systems, grid-connected filters can effectively eliminate harmonics. High-order filters perform better than conventional filters in eliminating harmonics and can reduce costs. For high-order filters, the use of multi-object...
Orexin A, an endogenous peptide involved in several functions including reward, acts via activation of orexin receptors OX1 and OX2, Gq-coupled GPCRs. We examined the effect of a selective OX1 agonist, OXA (17-33) on cytosolic calcium concentration,...
Opioids are substances derived from opium (natural opioids). In its raw state, opium is a gummy latex extracted from Papaver somniferum. The use of opioids and their negative health consequences among people who use drugs have been studied. Today, op...
In this paper, an improved dual neural network control method based on multi-agent system is proposed to solve the problem of rating the frequency deviation and voltage deviation of the microgrid system due to the uneven impedance distribution of the...
Social media addiction has become a global public health challenge, and understanding its mechanism’s complexity requires the integration of the transitional characteristics of addiction development stages and breaking through the traditional s...
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a complex eating disorder characterized by reduced caloric intake to achieve body-weight loss. Furthermore, over-exercise is commonly reported. In recent years, animal models of AN have provided evidence for neuroplasticity c...
This article delves into the complex world of quantum games in multi-agent settings, proposing a model wherein agents utilize gradient-based strategies to optimize local rewards. A learning model is introduced to focus on the learning efficacy of age...
Designing robust circuits that withstand environmental perturbation and device degradation is critical for many applications. Traditional robust circuit design is mainly done by tuning parameters to improve system robustness. However, the topological...
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurobiological condition characterized by developmentally inadequate levels of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, and a neurobiological disruption in brain neurotransmitters and circuitr...
Binge-eating disorder (BED) is a highly prevalent disorder. Subthreshold BED conditions (sBED) are even more frequent in youth, but their significance regarding BED etiology and long-term prognosis is unclear. A better understanding of brain findings...
The endocannabinoid system (eCBS) is a versatile neuromodulatory network that orchestrates synaptic plasticity, reward processing, and neuronal homeostasis. Increasing evidence implicates eCBS dysregulation in both addiction and neurodegenerative (ND...
It is well known that exercise promotes health and wellness, both mentally and physiologically. It has been shown to play a protective role in many diseases, including cardiovascular, neurological, and psychiatric diseases. The present study examined...
While opioids are a powerful class of drugs that inhibit transmission of pain signals, their use is tarnished by the current epidemic of opioid use disorder (OUD) and overdose deaths. Notwithstanding published reports, there remain gaps in our knowle...
Repeated cocaine exposure produces an enhanced locomotor response (sensitization) paralleled by biological adaptations in the brain. Previous studies demonstrated region-specific responsivity of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK)...
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