research questions for neuroscience

• How It Works
• PhD thesis writing
• Master thesis writing
• Bachelor thesis writing
• Dissertation writing service
• Dissertation abstract writing
• Thesis proposal writing
• Thesis editing service
• Thesis proofreading service
• Thesis formatting service
• Coursework writing service
• Research paper writing service
• Architecture thesis writing
• Computer science thesis writing
• Engineering thesis writing
• History thesis writing
• MBA thesis writing
• Nursing dissertation writing
• Psychology dissertation writing
• Sociology thesis writing
• Statistics dissertation writing
• Buy dissertation online
• Write my dissertation
• Cheap thesis
• Cheap dissertation
• Custom dissertation
• Dissertation help
• Pay for thesis
• Pay for dissertation
• Senior thesis
• Write my thesis

121 Original Neuroscience Research Topics

Now, wouldn’t it be great if you had a list of awesome neuroscience research topics to choose from? Our PhD dissertation help would definitely make writing a thesis or dissertation a lot easier. Well, the good news is that we have a long list of neuroscience paper topics for you right here.

The list of topics is updated periodically, so you will surely be able to find a unique topic; something that nobody has though of yet. And yes, you can use any of our topics for free.

Writing a Neuroscience Dissertation

To write a good dissertation, you need more than just our interesting neuroscience topics. Your supervisor expects you to make some progress pretty quickly, so you really need all the help you can get. You can get all the assistance you need to get started quickly from our dissertation experts and you’ll also find the following guide useful:

Set up your project and conduct the necessary research and data analysis. Don’t forget to think about an interesting, captivating thesis statement. Start by writing the first chapter of the dissertation, the introduction. This will provide your readers with comprehensive background information about your study. Write the Literature Review chapter. This will take some time, especially if you are dealing with a popular subject. Write the Methodology chapter. This is basically an iteration and in-depth description of each and every method you have used to collect the data. Write the Results chapter. In this chapter, you will present your readers the results of your research. You don’t need to provide your own take on the data yet. Next comes the Discussion (or Analysis) chapter. This is where you are free to discuss your results and show your readers how they support your thesis. Finally, the Conclusion chapter wraps everything up. You can summarize your methods, results and analysis and make it clear that your paper has answered all the relevant research questions. Write the References section and the Appendices section. Edit and proofread your work thoroughly to make sure you don’t lose points over some minor mistakes – or have our expert proofreaders and editors do it for you.

This step-by-step guide applies to any thesis or dissertation. However, before you even get this far, you need a great topic to start with. Fortunately, we have 121 brand new topics for you right here on this page.

Interesting Neuroscience Topics

If you are looking for some of the most interesting neuroscience topics, you have definitely arrived at the right place. Our experts have put together the best list of ideas for you:

• Research the occurrence of cerebrovascular disease in the United States
• What causes a headache?
• An in-depth look at muscular dystrophy
• The causes of multiple sclerosis
• Talk about neuroregeneration
• Define cognitive neuroscience
• Everything about dementia
• Study brain development from birth to age 2
• What causes Parkinson’s disease?
• The function of peripheral nerves
• What are vestibular disorders?
• Pain and the science behind it
• An in-depth analysis of stem cells

Engaging Topics in Neuroscience

Are you looking for some engaging topics in neuroscience? If you want the best ideas, all you have to do is take a look at the following list and take your pick:

• Research the Down syndrome
• A closer look at ADHD
• What causes brain tumors?
• What causes epilepsy episodes?
• Research the occurrence of schizophrenia in the UK
• An in-depth look at brain stimulation
• Treating severe depression in young adults
• Improving memory in the adult population
• The importance of sleep for brain health
• Mapping the human brain

Comprehensive Neuroscience Topic for Every Student

The nice thing about our blog is that we have a comprehensive neuroscience topic for every student. Even better, all our topics are relatively simple, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing research:

• The future of brain implants
• The processes behind depression
• The role of dopamine
• How are emotions created?
• Love starts in your brain, not your heart
• ADHD behavior and brain activity
• Effects of illegal drugs on dopamine production
• How does dyslexia manifest itself?
• Early stages of Schizophrenia
• The link between gut bacteria and the brain
• Studying the brains of people with a high IQ

Neuroscience Research Questions

The best way to get ideas for your next paper is to take a look at some original neuroscience research questions. Here are some that should get you started right away:

• How do brain tumors cause damage?
• What causes substance addiction?
• What role does the brain play in autistic spectrum disorders?
• Does being a vegetarian influence your brain?
• What causes chronic migraines?
• Why is Pierre Paul Broca’s work important?
• Why is stress so dangerous for the brain?
• How do genes influence the onset of Alzheimer’s disease?
• What can cause a brain tumor?
• Does music affect the human brain?
• Can repeated head injuries damage the brain? (think about modern sports)
• What does being Bipolar I mean?

Easy Neuroscience Paper Topics

Our experts have created a list of easy neuroscience paper topics for you. You could start writing your thesis in no time if you choose one of these great ideas:

• What causes epilepsy?
• A closer look at Alzheimer’s disease
• What can cause a loss of feeling?
• The effects of dementia on the brain
• The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease
• What can cause memory loss?
• Mitigating headaches without medication
• The effects of a mild stroke
• Talk about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
• What can cause a lack of coordination?

Neuroscience Research Topics for College Students

We have a list of awesome neuroscience research topics for college students and you can use any one of them for free. Take a look at our best ideas yet:

• Can the brain be linked to substance abuse?
• How does the brain recognize people?
• Latest development in brain surgery
• An in-depth look at neuroplasticity
• Innovative medication for treating brain disorders
• Treating Alzheimer’s in 2023
• How damaging is Cannabis for the brain?

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Topics

If you want to talk about something in cognitive neuroscience, we have put together the best and most interesting cognitive neuroscience research topics:

• The role played by neurons in our body
• What is Magnetoencephalography?
• How difficult is it to map the entire brain?
• Define consciousness from a neurological POV
• How does our brain affect our perception?
• Discuss Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation procedures
• Latest advancements in Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Brain Research Topics

Brain research is a very interesting thing to talk about, especially since we are still struggling to understand how certain things work. Take a look at some amazing brain research topics:

• Study the brain development of an infant
• Brain tumor stages
• The effect of social media on the human brain
• Multiple sclerosis treatment options
• What can cause muscular dystrophy?
• Discuss 3 cerebrovascular diseases
• Interesting breakthroughs in cellular neuroscience
• Talk about our brain’s problem-solving abilities
• The effects of sugar on brain chemistry

Neurobiology Topics

We agree, researching a topic in neurobiology is not easy. However, with the right neurobiology topics, you could write an awesome thesis without spending years working on it:

• Research the role of the amygdala
• What are brain neurotransmitters?
• The causes of posttraumatic stress disorder
• How do we recognize a bipolar disorder?
• The importance of hormones
• Talk about experimental psychology

Behavioral Neuroscience Research Topics

Do you want to write your dissertation on a behavioral neuroscience topic? Our experts have compiled a list of the most interesting behavioral neuroscience research topics for you:

• The processes behind sensation
• How does the brain control our movement?
• An in-depth look at motivated behavior
• Best way to diagnose a sleep disorder
• Improving success at academic activities
• How does your brain perceive the environment?

Cool Neuroscience Topics

We have some very cool neuroscience topics right here and the good news is that they’re all relatively easy. The list has been updated recently and new topics have been added:

• Effects of plant-based diets
• The life and work of Cornelia Bargmann
• Discuss a breakthrough in neurotech
• 3D brain function mapping
• Discuss the importance of brain implants
• The life and work of Róbert Bárány

Controversial Topics in Neuroscience

Just like any other field, neuroscience has its controversies. And what better way to start a dissertation than finding the most controversial topics in neuroscience:

• Discuss the Bayesian brain theory
• Ethics behind wearable brain gadgets
• Discuss postnatal neurogenesis
• Can our brain “deep learn”?
• Invasive brain imaging procedures
• How do we differentiate between good and bad?

Hot Topics in Neuroscience

Did you know that getting hot topics in neuroscience is not overly difficult? This section of our list of topics is updated periodically, so you can definitely find an original idea right here:

• Electrical brain stimulation methods
• Define the concept of Free Will
• Talk about hereditary brain disorders
• How is speech formed?
• Can our brain hibernate?
• What causes aggressive behavior?

Current Topics in Neuroscience

The best way to make your thesis interesting is to write about something that is of great interest. This means you need to choose one of our current topics in neuroscience:

• Cerebellar Neurons that can help you lose weight
• Effects of a meat-based diet
• Latest brain mapping technology
• CT scans in 2023
• Brain implants that can control a computer
• An in-depth look at super-agers

Complex Neurological Research Topics

Are you looking for some complex neurological research topics? If you want to give a difficult topic a try, don’t hesitate to choose one of these excellent ideas:

• An in-depth look at the Demyelinating disease
• The effects of a cerebrovascular stroke
• Bioterrorism in 2023
• Legal issues in neurology
• Dopamine’s link to aggressiveness
• Brain changes that lead to alcohol addiction

Can You Help Me With My Thesis?

So, can you help me with my thesis? Of course, we can help you with much more than some interesting neuroscience research paper topics. Our experienced professionals are ready to give you the best dissertation assistance on the Internet and make sure you get a top score on your paper. All our university educated ENL writers have extensive experience writing dissertations on any subject and topic you can imagine. These cheap dissertation writing services can deliver a final paper in no time, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us even if you are on a tight deadline.

Our PhD-holding writers and editors are ready to spring into action right now. We can help you with the research, as well as with thesis writing, editing and proofreading. Moreover, we can write a high quality research paper for any high school, college or university student. Your professor will love our work – guaranteed. Our company has 24/7 customer support, so you can order custom academic content online at any time of day or night. What are you waiting for? Give us a try and get a discount!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment * Error message

Name * Error message

Email * Error message

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

As Putin continues killing civilians, bombing kindergartens, and threatening WWIII, Ukraine fights for the world's peaceful future.

Ukraine Live Updates

Research Topics & Ideas: Neuroscience

50 Topic Ideas To Kickstart Your Research Project

If you’re just starting out exploring neuroscience-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research by providing a hearty list of neuroscience-related research ideas , including examples from recent studies.

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . These topic ideas provided here are intentionally broad and generic , so keep in mind that you will need to develop them further. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

To develop a suitable research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan to fill that gap. If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Neuroscience-Related Research Topics

• Investigating the neural mechanisms underlying memory consolidation during sleep.
• The role of neuroplasticity in recovery from traumatic brain injury.
• Analyzing the impact of chronic stress on hippocampal function.
• The neural correlates of anxiety disorders: A functional MRI study.
• Investigating the effects of meditation on brain structure and function in mindfulness practitioners.
• The role of the gut-brain axis in the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
• Analyzing the neurobiological basis of addiction and its implications for treatment.
• The impact of prenatal exposure to environmental toxins on neurodevelopment.
• Investigating gender differences in brain aging and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
• The neural mechanisms of pain perception and its modulation by psychological factors.
• Analyzing the effects of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility and brain aging.
• The role of the endocannabinoid system in regulating mood and emotional responses.
• Investigating the neurobiological underpinnings of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• The impact of virtual reality technology on cognitive rehabilitation in stroke patients.
• Analyzing the neural basis of social cognition deficits in autism spectrum disorders.
• The role of neuroinflammation in the progression of multiple sclerosis.
• Investigating the effects of dietary interventions on brain health and cognitive function.
• The neural substrates of decision-making under risk and uncertainty.
• Analyzing the impact of early life stress on brain development and mental health outcomes.
• The role of dopamine in motivation and reward processing in the human brain.
• Investigating neural circuitry changes in depression and response to antidepressants.
• The impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance and neural function.
• Analyzing the brain mechanisms involved in empathy and moral reasoning.
• The role of the prefrontal cortex in executive function and impulse control.
• Investigating the neurophysiological basis of schizophrenia.

Neuroscience Research Ideas (Continued)

• The impact of chronic pain on brain structure and connectivity.
• Analyzing the effects of physical exercise on neurogenesis and cognitive aging.
• The neural mechanisms underlying hallucinations in psychiatric and neurological disorders.
• Investigating the impact of music therapy on brain recovery post-stroke.
• The role of astrocytes in neural communication and brain homeostasis.
• Analyzing the effect of hormone fluctuations on mood and cognition in women.
• The impact of neurofeedback training on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Investigating the neural basis of resilience to stress and trauma.
• The role of the cerebellum in non-motor cognitive and affective functions.
• Analyzing the contribution of genetics to individual differences in brain structure and function.
• The impact of air pollution on neurodevelopment and cognitive decline.
• Investigating the neural mechanisms of visual perception and visual illusions.
• The role of mirror neurons in empathy and social understanding.
• Analyzing the neural correlates of language development and language disorders.
• The impact of social isolation on neurocognitive health in the elderly.
• Investigating the brain mechanisms involved in chronic fatigue syndrome.
• The role of serotonin in mood regulation and its implications for antidepressant therapies.
• Analyzing the neural basis of impulsivity and its relation to risky behaviors.
• The impact of mobile technology usage on attention and brain function.
• Investigating the neural substrates of fear and anxiety-related disorders.
• The role of the olfactory system in memory and emotional processing.
• Analyzing the impact of gut microbiome alterations on central nervous system diseases.
• The neural mechanisms of placebo and nocebo effects.
• Investigating cortical reorganization following limb amputation and phantom limb pain.
• The role of epigenetics in neural development and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Recent Neuroscience Studies

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual studies in the neuroscience space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of recent studies to help refine your thinking. These are actual studies,  so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• The Neurodata Without Borders ecosystem for neurophysiological data science (Rübel et al., 2022)
• Genetic regulation of central synapse formation and organization in Drosophila melanogaster (Duhart & Mosca, 2022)
• Embracing brain and behaviour: Designing programs of complementary neurophysiological and behavioural studies (Kirwan et al., 2022).
• Neuroscience and Education (Georgieva, 2022)
• Why Wait? Neuroscience Is for Everyone! (Myslinski, 2022)
• Neuroscience Knowledge and Endorsement of Neuromyths among Educators: What Is the Scenario in Brazil? (Simoes et al., 2022)
• Design of Clinical Trials and Ethical Concerns in Neurosciences (Mehanna, 2022) Methodological Approaches and Considerations for Generating Evidence that Informs the Science of Learning (Anderson, 2022)
• Exploring the research on neuroscience as a basis to understand work-based outcomes and to formulate new insights into the effective management of human resources in the workplace: A review study (Menon & Bhagat, 2022)
• Neuroimaging Applications for Diagnosis and Therapy of Pathologies in the Central and Peripheral Nervous System (Middei, 2022)
• The Role of Human Communicative Competence in Post-Industrial Society (Ilishova et al., 2022)
• Gold nanostructures: synthesis, properties, and neurological applications (Zare et al., 2022)
• Interpretable Graph Neural Networks for Connectome-Based Brain Disorder Analysis (Cui et al., 2022)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest.  In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

Get 1-On-1 Help

If you’re still unsure about how to find a quality research topic, check out our Research Topic Kickstarter service, which is the perfect starting point for developing a unique, well-justified research topic.

You Might Also Like:

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

• How it works

Useful Links

How much will your dissertation cost?

Have an expert academic write your dissertation paper!

Dissertation Services

Get unlimited topic ideas and a dissertation plan for just £45.00

Order topics and plan

Get 1 free topic in your area of study with aim and justification

Yes I want the free topic

Neuroscience Dissertation Topics – Based on Recent Academic Research

Published by Ellie Cross at December 29th, 2022 , Revised On August 16, 2023

Are you looking for the best neuroscience dissertation topics? Here we go! Here are some intriguing neuroscience study topic suggestions that you may find helpful.

Neuroscience is a scientific field that studies the structure and function of the nervous system. On a broad scale, the topic covers numerous behavioural, computational, cellular, evolutionary, functional, molecular, and therapeutic facets of the nervous system.

Many students have trouble coming up with fascinating neuroscience research project topics. Choosing a topic for the dissertation is a crucial step in the dissertation writing process . Using brainstorming techniques, you can narrow down a large concept into a specific study area. Spend an hour brainstorming and reflecting on ideas that might make for a good project.

If you don’t have the time to brainstorm because you have been procrastinating for too long, choose one of the neuroscience topics suggested below.

Related Links:

• Medical Law Dissertation Topics
• Mental Health Dissertation Topics
• Healthcare Dissertation Topics
• Child Health Nursing Dissertation Topics
• Contract Law Dissertation Topics

Other Useful Links

• Commercial Law Dissertation Topics
• EU Law Dissertation Ideas
• Sports Law Dissertation Topics
• Maritime Law Dissertation Topics

Trending Dissertation Topics For Your Neuroscience Paper

• Discuss neuroscience from an atheist’s point of view
• What are some of the fundamental ideas that guide research into the human brain?
• Describe how the theory of neuroplasticity relates to imparting new knowledge to the brain
• Describe the neuroscience of harmony, paying particular attention to how sound waves typically travel through the brain and the effects they have
• While some people are naturally gifted, others learn things over time. Examine the neuroscience of brilliance and the ways it appears
• Describe the effects of Parkinson’s disease on the brain
• The brain significantly correlates with and coordinates human sexuality. Describe the process
• How can people get hooked on substances? Describe using the example of the brain
• What role does emotion play in how individuals perceive things like music and art?
• How can chronic fatigue syndrome result from Gulf War disorder in those who have not experienced trauma?
• Why are older persons who contract infections associated with Alzheimer’s disease?
• What part does developing internal modes play in young people’s development of motor skills?
• How does physical damage cause the brain to reorganise its connections to internal organs?
• We occasionally run into completely mad people. Describe how they go mad when their brains no longer operate like regular people
• Ageing and memory are notions that operate in opposition to one another. Describe how some people can preserve their mental capacity as they age
• Investigate the neurobiology of anxiety disorders at the preclinical stage
• Love and other emotional attachments are equally shared and expressed in the brain, just like sex is. Talk about how some of these feelings develop over time
• Highlighting the pathophysiology of mental retardation, describe the fragile X condition in detail. What symptoms does this condition show?
• Compare and contrast clinical and translational neuroscience
• Describe computational neuroscience in general
• Describe the variations among the many fields of neuroscience
• How might eye movement serve as a crucial missing piece in the study of memory?
• Discuss the origins of the effects of the degenerative brain condition
• What is the connection between severe head traumas and harm to internal organs?
• How does early childhood neurodevelopment affect whether autism is present in young people?
• Nerve stimulation is thought to aid in recovering consciousness in coma patients. What’s made clear in this relationship?
• Discover the link between postpartum depression in first-time moms and brain chemistry
• What are the most recent areas of emotional brain research that concern autistic people?
• How do our brains analyse and distinguish between diverse speech patterns to recognise family members?
• What are teenagers’ mental hazards, and what does having a high IQ mean?
• How can the presence of gut bacteria in the human body impact mental health?
• What impact do drugs like marijuana and alcohol have on our bodies’ levels of dopamine?
• What mental dangers do young people confront when they play sports with high head contact rates?
• How have contentious topics in neuroscience altered the field’s environment during the past ten years?
• What effects does marijuana usage have on the brain regions where self-control is formed in adolescents?
• What strides have been achieved in creating effective remedies for emotional and mental suffering?
• What are the adverse cognitive effects associated with the long-term use of a hearing aid?
• Several “purchase” buttons in the brain using MRI to predict point-of-sale chocolate sales based on functional brain activity
• A Neuropsychological Analysis of Consumer Processing of Secure and Risky Information E-payments.
• Graphical components that foster confidence in online stores
• How product descriptions in online buying affect customer’s evidence for the attribute framing effect from event-related potentials
• With the use of nerve stimulation, we have seen coma patients come to. What justifies this connection?
• How does the frequency of autism in young individuals relate to early childhood neurodevelopment?
• How do people’s levels of stress change when memory activities are included in therapy?
• What relationship does brain chemistry have with postpartum depression in first-time mothers?
• What are recent developments in emotional brain research pertinent to those with autism?
• How can our brain discern between various speech accents to identify members of our family?
• What psychological risks do young adults who participate in contact sports face?
• How have controversial topics affected the discipline of neuroscience during the past ten years?
• Is caffeine addiction detrimental to one’s ability to work effectively?
• How does lucid dreaming assist individuals in giving up bad habits like smoking and binge eating?
• What effects does the human body’s gut flora have on emotional health
• Can drugs or medications impact one’s religious beliefs on the regions of the brain that manufacture melatonin?
• How does the hippocampal region of the brain impact imagination and future planning?
• What effects does therapy of the left or right hemispheres of the brain have on the severity of schizophrenia symptoms?

Order a Proposal

Worried about your dissertation proposal? Not sure where to start?

• Choose any deadline
• Plagiarism free
• Unlimited free amendments
• Free anti-plagiarism report
• Completed to match exact requirements

You can create an impactful thesis paper using any of the suggestions in our list of neuroscience dissertation and thesis topics. You can also modify the preceding topics according to your academic level and country of study. Get in touch with our team if you are looking for customised neuroscience dissertation topics .

Moreover, if you have trouble completing your neuroscience study, use our dissertation writing service to achieve your desired grade. Neuroscientists on our team of experienced academic writers are experts at composing and delivering research dissertations on any neuroscience topic without plagiarism .

Free Dissertation Topic

Phone Number

Academic Level Select Academic Level Undergraduate Graduate PHD

Academic Subject

Area of Research

Frequently Asked Questions

How to find neuroscience dissertation topics.

To find neuroscience dissertation topics:

• Research recent advancements.
• Explore unanswered questions.
• Review neuroscience journals.
• Consider interdisciplinary angles.
• Consult professors and experts.
• Select a topic aligning with your passion and skills.

You May Also Like

The law of contracts is considered to be one of the most integral parts of business. Employees and companies exchange financial information through this system. The task of writing a top-notch dissertation.

Use our latest list of the best demonstration speech topics available for free to improve your presentations and engage your audience.

Need interesting and manageable Snapchat dissertation topics? Here are the trending Snapchat dissertation titles so you can choose the most suitable one.

USEFUL LINKS

LEARNING RESOURCES

COMPANY DETAILS

• How It Works

Harvard researchers are deeply committed to understanding nervous system development and function, in both healthy and disease states. Basic scientists and clinician-researchers work together across departments, programs and centers to study the nervous system from diverse perspectives, as shown in the overlapping subfields below. You can click the boxes below to explore news stories on relevant publications in each area. You can also sort our lab directory by these research areas.

Image Credits

Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Courtesy of Lauren Orefice (MGH/HMS) Tools and Technology: Courtesy of Barbara Robens, lab of Ann Poduri (BCH) Sensory and Motor Systems: Courtesy of Lauren Orefice (MGH/HMS) Mental Health and Illness: Courtesy of Olga Alekseenko, Lab of Susan Dymecki (HMS) Neurodegenerative Disease: Courtesy of Jeff Lichtman (Harvard) and Takao Hensch (Harvard/BCH) Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience: Courtesy of Isle Bastille, lab of Lisa Goodrich (HMS) Theory and Computation: Courtesy of Tianyang Ye, lab of Hongkun Park (Harvard) Development Neuroscience: Courtesy of Katherine Morillo, lab of Christopher A. Walsh (BCH)

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

The emotional brain: Fundamental questions and strategies for future research

Alexander j. shackman.

1 Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA

3 Department of Maryland Neuroimaging Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA

Tor D. Wager

4 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 USA

5 Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 USA

Emotions play a central role in human experience. Over time, methods for manipulating emotion have become increasingly refined and techniques for making sense of the underlying neurobiology have become ever more powerful and precise, enabling new insights into the organization of emotions in the brain. Yet recent years have witnessed a remarkably vigorous debate about the nature and origins of emotion, with leading scientists raising compelling concerns about the canon of facts and principles that has inspired and guided the field for the past quarter century. Here, we consider ways in which recent neuroimaging research informs this dialogue. By focusing attention on the most important outstanding questions about the nature of emotion and the architecture of the emotional brain, we hope to stimulate the kinds of work that will be required to move the field forward. Addressing these questions is critical, not just for understanding the mind, but also for elucidating the root causes of many of its disorders.

Emotions play a central role in human experience and there is an abiding interest—among scientists, clinicians, and the public at large—in determining their nature, understanding their origins, and clarifying their implications for health and disease. Methods for eliciting, assessing, and analyzing emotion have become increasingly refined (e.g., Coan & Allen, 2007 ; Cowen & Keltner, 2017 ) and techniques for making sense of the underlying neurobiology have become more powerful and precise (e.g., Glasser et al., 2016 ; Kim, Adhikari, & Deisseroth, 2017 ; Urban & Roth, 2015 ; Woo, Chang, Lindquist, & Wager, 2017 ). The 10 reviews that make up our Special Issue on Functional Neuroimaging of the Emotional Brain embody these exciting developments and illustrate the tremendous progress that has been made using brain imaging approaches. Yet recent years have witnessed a remarkably vigorous debate about the nature of emotion, with leading scientists challenging the canon of facts and shared assumptions that has inspired and guided the field for the past quarter-century ( Adolphs, 2017a , 2017b ; Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 ; Barrett, 2017a , 2017b , 2017c , 2018a ; Barrett, Khan, Dy, & Brooks, 2018 ; Clark-Polner, Johnson, & Barrett, 2017 ; Cordaro, Fridlund, Keltner, & Russell, 2015 ; Cowen & Keltner, 2018 ; Fox, Lapate, Davidson, & Shackman, 2018 ; LeDoux, 2014 , 2015 ; LeDoux & Hofmann, 2018 ; Pine & LeDoux, 2017 ). As Adolphs and Anderson recently wrote,

“Emotions are one of the most apparent and important aspects of our lives, yet have remained one of the most enigmatic to explain scientifically. On the one hand, nothing seems more obvious than that we and many other animals have emotions…On the other hand, the scientific study of emotions is a piecemeal and confused discipline, with some…advocating that we get rid of the word emotion altogether.” ( Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 , p. xi).

Here we consider ways in which the Special Issue informs this scientific dialogue, focusing on what we see as some of the most fundamental questions:

• What is an emotion?
• Are emotions natural kinds waiting to be discovered and catalogued (like stars) or human concepts (like constellations)?
• Are particular emotions, such as fear, associated with distinct facial expressions and patterns of physiology, or what we might think of as biological ‘fingerprints’?
• Should we think of emotions as discrete clusters or families of ‘basic’ emotions — as exemplified in the popular Disney movie “Inside Out” ( http://atlasofemotions.org ; Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 ; Ekman & Cordaro, 2011 ; Levenson, 2011 ; Panksepp, 1998 )…
• …As points in a smooth, low dimensional space ( Lang & Bradley, 2018 ; Mattek, Wolford, & Whalen, 2017 ; Rolls, 2005 ; Yik, Russell, & Steiger, 2011 )…
• …Or some hybrid of these two extremes ( Cowen & Keltner, 2017 )?
• What develops in emotional development?
• How are emotions regulated?
• How are emotions embodied in the social world?
• Do animals have emotions?

It has been written that “science best progresses through multiple and mutually critical attempts to understand the same problem” ( Kenrick & Funder, 1988 , p. 32), and we believe that highlighting key points of consensus and disagreement among our contributors provides a useful opportunity for sharpening constructs, articulating unspoken assumptions, and identifying soft spots in the literature. In focusing attention on these key questions, and juxtaposing clear theoretical goals against the state of the science, we hope to stimulate the kinds of thoughtful discussion and creative research that will be required to understand the nature of emotion and the organization of the emotional brain. At the end of each section, we highlight some of the most important challenges for future research and some strategies for addressing them.

The Nature of Emotion

Nummenmaa and Saarimäki tell us that basic emotions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—exist and are associated with categorically distinct feelings, facial expressions, and patterns of autonomic activity (Nummenmaa & Saarimäki, this issue ). Barrett and Satpute reject these claims (Barrett & Satpute, this issue ), arguing that there is little evidence of specificity. Instead, they emphasize the marked differences in behavior and autonomic activity across instances of particular emotions (i.e., intra-emotion variation) and the considerable overlap across emotions (e.g., Siegel et al., 2018 ). The two camps seem to agree that emotions reflect broadly distributed neural circuits, noting that there is little evidence of consistent one-to-one mappings between particular emotions and isolated brain regions, such as the amygdala. But they radically differ in their interpretation of those circuits. Nummenmaa and Saarimäki tell us that basic emotions are associated with specific patterns of neural activity (e.g., Saarimaki et al., 2018 ). But Barrett and Satpute argue that the neural fingerprints revealed by machine-learning approaches markedly differ across studies, laboratories, induction techniques, and even across participants ( Barrett, 2018b )—echoing other recent commentaries ( Kragel & LaBar, 2016 ; Wager, Krishnan, & Hitchcock, 2018 ). Building on these observations, Barrett and Satpute tell us that emotions are not natural kinds and do not reflect invariant biological substrates, that they have no fingerprints in the brain or body. From their perspective, emotions are constructed from domain-general building blocks—cells, regions, circuits, and patterns of autonomic activity—that are not specific to any particular emotion, or even to emotion itself. The configuration of those components is held to be dynamic , exquisitely sensitive to momentary fluctuations in the external environment and the internal milieu, and causally distributed , with none of the individual components necessary or sufficient for experiencing particular emotions.

So, where do we go from here? It is clear that the last several years have witnessed important advances in our understanding of how emotions are organized in the human brain. At the level of resolution afforded by conventional brain imaging techniques, these new data make it clear that emotions arise from networks, not isolated brain centers (for related perspectives, see Casey et al., this issue ; Baratta & Maier, this issue ; Fox & Shackman, this issue ). Activation in particular brain regions, like the amygdala, explain small amounts of the variance in emotional states (e.g., as indexed by ratings) ( Chang, Gianaros, Manuck, Krishnan, & Wager, 2015 ) and emotional disorders ( Shackman & Fox, 2018 ). Individual voxels, regions, and functional connections often contribute to multiple mental states and processes, some more emotional, others more cognitive, a one-to-many mapping sometimes dubbed ‘multiplexing’ ( Pessoa, 2013 ; Shackman, Fox, & Seminowicz, 2015 ; Shackman & Lapate, 2018b ). This work also showcases the utility of machine learning techniques for discovering neural fingerprints and quantifying the degree to which they predict specific emotions, a reverse inference not licensed by traditional ‘massively univariate’ brain-mapping approaches ( Kragel, Koban, Barrett, & Wager, 2018b ; Brooks & Freeman, this issue; Lamm et al., this issue; Spunt & Adolphs, this issue; Kragel & LaBar, 2016 ; Woo et al., 2017 ).

Still, it is clear that considerable work remains. It would be premature to draw any strong conclusions about the neural organization of emotion or the prospects of discovering emotion-specific fingerprints based on this first generation of machine-learning studies ( Kragel & LaBar, 2016 ). A key challenge for the future will be to create more generalizable emotion fingerprints; predictive models that are derived from multiple induction techniques, grounded in parametric variation in one or more read-outs, and tested on independent samples (e.g., ratings, peripheral physiology, behavior) (Lamm et al., this issue; Kragel et al., 2018a ; Woo et al., 2017 ). Establishing the construct validity—the sensitivity and specificity—of these models will require comparison with a broad range of comparison tasks and stimuli ( Zaki, Wager, Singer, Keysers, & Gazzola, 2016 ), including a range of emotions ( Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 ). Doing so promises a clearer understanding of how emotions are encoded in the human brain.

Nummenmaa and Saarimäki also remind us that imaging alone cannot address the necessity or sufficiency of the regions or connections embedded within these global patterns of activation—a point made by a number of other contributors (Lamm et al., this issue ; Spunt & Adolphs, this issue; Baratta & Maier, this issue ; Fox & Shackman, this issue ). Addressing this important concern will require a greater focus on biological (e.g., pharmaceuticals, transcranial magnetic stimulation) and psychosocial interventions (e.g., emotion regulation, mindfulness, placebo) in humans (e.g., Duff et al., 2015 ; Hur et al., in press-a ; Paulus, Feinstein, Castillo, Simmons, & Stein, 2005 ; Wager et al., 2013 ; Zunhammer, Bingel, Wager, & The Placebo Imaging Consortium, in press ) and a greater emphasis on developing more integrative models in monkeys and rodents ( Institute of Medicine, 2013 , 2014 ; Baratta & Maier, this issue; Fox & Shackman, this issue; Markou, Chiamulera, Geyer, Tricklebank, & Steckler, 2009 ). Studies of neuropsychological patients with circumscribed insults are also likely to be fruitful ( Adolphs, 2016 ; Dubois et al., in press ; Feinstein et al., 2016 ; Levenson, 2018 ; Motzkin et al., 2015 ; Salomons, Iannetti, Liang, & Wood, 2016 ).

The Nature of Arousal

Arousal plays a central role in most models of emotion ( Lapate & Shackman, 2018b ), but the underlying neurobiology has remained enigmatic. Satpute and colleagues tell us that this lack of progress reflects two barriers: one conceptual, the other empirical (Satpute et al., this issue ). Conceptually, arousal encompasses a variety of systems, including those underlying the transition from sleep and sedation to alert wakefulness, those involved in activating the autonomic nervous system (e.g., racing heart), and those underlying the subjective intensity of emotional feelings. All these disparate phenomena are typically lumped under the undifferentiated rubric of ‘arousal,’ obscuring potentially important differences in neurobiology—an endemic problem in the affective sciences (Lamm et al., this issue; Fox, Lapate, Davidson, & Shackman, 2018a ). Satpute and colleagues describe an integrative framework for beginning to organize this complexity. They argue that wakefulness, autonomic arousal, and affective arousal are not categorically distinct phenomena. Instead, they seem to reflect massively overlapping substrates that are “separable in terms of their weighted contributions and functional interactions (i.e., their recipes).”

From an empirical perspective, Satpute and colleagues highlight the challenges of imaging the small brainstem, thalamic, and hypothalamic nuclei thought to be involved in orchestrating different flavors of arousal. They emphasize that “the brainstem is slightly larger than a human thumb” and contains more than 150 distinct nuclei; of these, less than 10% have been successfully identified in humans using in vivo imaging techniques. They tell us that several recently developed and emerging approaches—7 T fMRI, multiband imaging sequences, and multi-modal contrast techniques—open to door to imaging many of these regions for the first time. Satpute and colleagues make it clear that these kinds of imaging approaches will be important for understanding whether the mechanisms inferred from animal studies of arousal are conserved in humans. More broadly, when used to survey the entire brain, they also provide critical opportunities for understanding the role of small subcortical nuclei—nuclei nested within the extended amygdala, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the periaqueductal gray, and so on—in governing the function of distal regions and circuits in ways that we normally experience as alertness (or fatigue), somatomotor activation, and emotion, and—when they go awry—that likely contribute to a range of mental and neurological disorders.

The Development of the Emotional Brain

Emotions have their roots early in development and there is widespread agreement that nearly every aspect of emotion continues to change and mature across the lifespan ( Goldsmith, 2018 ; Lapate & Shackman, 2018a ; Lee et al., 2014 ; Shiner, 2018 ; Somerville & McLaughlin, 2018 ). Yet, the nature of these changes and their underlying neurobiology remain poorly understood. Here, Casey and colleagues focus on adolescence, an important and comparatively understudied chapter of life that often marks the first emergence of psychopathology and other burdens on public health and safety (e.g., injury due to risky behaviors) (Casey et al., this issue ). Adolescents are prone to more intense and labile feelings, and Casey and colleagues suggest that this reflects the asynchronous tuning of different neural circuits, beginning with the maturation of subcortical-subcortical connections early in childhood and culminating in bi-directional cortico-subcortical and cortico-cortical connections in mid and late adolescence. Ultimately, they tell us, this neural asynchrony biases feelings and behavior toward immediate threats and rewards Enhanced connectivity between the amygdala and ventral striatum early in development, for example, is hypothesized to promote rash decisions and impulsive actions in the face of emotionally salient cues.

Identifying the neural mechanisms underlying the development of emotion is exceedingly important, but difficult. Aside from the practical and technical difficulties of imaging youth, it is challenging to disentangle developmental changes in neural connectivity from co-occurring changes in hormones, cognitive control, and experience, including profound changes in stress and autonomy, as children transition to new schools, new jobs, and new kinds of social roles and networks ( Fox et al., 2018a ). A growing body of large, richly phenotyped, and publicly available pediatric imaging datasets promises new opportunities for dissecting the contribution of these factors to early-life emotion ( Rosenberg, Casey, & Holmes, 2018 ; Uddin & Karlsgodt, 2018 ), with important implications for identifying modifiable targets and developing more effective interventions for individuals in whom emotion development has gone awry (for related perspectives, see Doré, Silvers, & Ochsner, 2016 ; McLaughlin, 2016 ).

The Regulation of Emotion

We humans frequently regulate our emotions, and we do so using a variety of increasingly well understood strategies ( Braunstein, Gross, & Ochsner, 2017 ; Doré et al., 2016 ; Gross, 2015a , 2015b ; Shackman & Lapate, 2018a ; Sheppes, Suri, & Gross, 2015 ). Like emotional reactivity, emotion regulation can be viewed as both a transient state and a more enduring trait. Trait-like individual differences in emotion regulation are thought to play a critical role in childhood temperament, adult personality, and mental illness ( Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007 ; Etkin, Buchel, & Gross, 2015 ; Sheppes et al., 2015 ). Silvers and Moreira extend this conceptual framework, emphasizing the distinction between individual differences in the capacity to regulate emotion and in the tendency to use particular regulatory strategies (Silvers & Moreira, this issue ). Recent meta-analyses suggest that regulatory capacity reflects biasing signals directed from frontoparietal regions to the amygdala and other subcortical structures that play a more proximal role in orchestrating emotional states ( Buhle et al., 2014 ). Silvers and Moreira highlight emerging evidence that patients with mood and anxiety disorders show intact regulatory capacity in the laboratory—indexed by the ability to voluntarily recruit these frontoparietal regulatory regions—and impaired performance in their daily lives, as indexed by the tendency to choose maladaptive regulatory strategies. Developing a deeper understanding of the nature of regulatory capacity and choice is a fruitful avenue for future research, with implications for more effectively treating emotional disorders and for more efficiently matching patients to the most beneficial psychosocial treatments (‘stratified medicine’) ( Hur, Tillman, Fox, & Shackman, in press-b ; Shackman & Fox, 2018 ).

Emotion and the Social World

Social cues, interactions, and relationships dominate the landscape of emotion in contemporary human society. The association between the social and the emotional is complex and recursive: emotional signals can elicit changes in the social environment, which in turn can influence how the sender perceives, experiences, or expresses emotion ( Fox & Shackman, 2018 ; Lapate & Fox, 2018 ). Emotional experiences are routinely shared and dissected with close companions ( Rime, 2009 ) who, in turn, play an important role in buffering stress, promoting positive affect, and repairing mood ( Reeck, Ames, & Ochsner, 2016 ; Shackman et al., 2018 ; Zaki & Williams, 2013 ). Maladaptive expressions of negative affect increase the likelihood of adverse social outcomes, including conflict, rejection, and relationship dissolution ( Shackman et al., 2016b ). In short, human emotion is profoundly social. As part of the Special Issue, several contributors considered ways in which emotions dynamically reverberate between individuals and their social environment.

From Darwin’s time on, the face has played an outsized role in in scientific models of emotion ( Darwin, 1872/2009 ). Often, the perception of the facial displays of emotion is conceptualized as an automatic ‘readout’ of specific cues (e.g., widened eyes, furrowed brow), a purely ‘bottom-up’ decoding process. Brooks and Freeman tell us about a growing body of work demonstrating that emotion perception is, in fact, often actively shaped by ‘top-down’ processes (Brooks & Freeman, this issue; Freeman, 2018 ). In this way, pre-existing expectations—including prior knowledge, stereotypes, and contextual information—can influence the construction of perceptual representations of emotional and socially relevant signals (e.g., gender, race, and personality) in the ventral visual processing stream. Put simply, our pre-existing thoughts, feelings, and attitudes can literally change how we see others, bias our evaluation of them, and change how we behave. As detailed elsewhere, this line of research is particularly exciting because it is grounded in behavior and because it harnesses machine learning to understand how seemingly ‘low-level’ perceptual representations can be influenced by expectations ( Freeman, in press ; Stolier & Freeman, 2017 ; Stolier, Hehman, & Freeman, 2018 ).

Spunt and Adolphs stake out a broadly similar position (Spunt & Adolphs, this issue ), telling us that the processes involved in detecting (e.g., widened eyes), categorizing (e.g., fear), and inferring the likely cause of emotion signals (e.g., imminent crash) occur in parallel ( Pessoa & Adolphs, 2010 ) and can influence one another in ways that dovetail with predictive coding architectures and Bayesian models of perception (Barrett & Satpute, this issue; Friston, Joffily, Barrett, & Seth, 2018 ). They highlight lesion and machine learning evidence suggesting that categorizing emotion signals (affect ‘labeling’) is an ‘embodied’ cognitive process, one that is influenced by changes in the perceiver’s momentary interoceptive state evoked by the sender’s emotional signals.

Lamm, Rütgen and Wagner focus on empathy, compassion, and other emotions that promote prosocial behavior (Lamm et al., this issue ). Building on recent work in this area (e.g., Engen & Singer, 2018 ; Zaki et al., 2016 ), they emphasize the importance of neural systems involved in vicarious or shared emotional experiences—a neural analogue to ‘embodied’ models of emotion decoding. For example, they review evidence that placebo analgesia manipulations not only reduce one’s own pain, they can also reduce empathy for the pain of others. These behavioral effects are accompanied by reduced activation in pain-related brain regions and are blocked by opioid antagonists, reinforcing the possibility of shared substrates for own- and other-directed (i.e., egocentric and allocentric) emotions. Lamm and colleagues highlight the challenges of identifying generalizable compassion circuits, patterns of neural activation that are not specific to particular techniques for eliciting or cultivating feelings of compassion. Although their focus is on compassion, it is worth emphasizing that this is a general issue for efforts to understand how particular psychological processes—pain, negative affect, cognitive control, and so on—are organized in the brain ( Kragel et al., 2018a ). Discerning whether a pattern of activation reflects these kinds of latent constructs is exceedingly difficult— Is it working memory or visuospatial change detection? Cognitive control or Eriksen flanker? Anxiety or threat-of-shock? —but can be overcome by examining multiple assays or induction techniques, either meta-analytically or, better still, within individual samples.

Animal Models of Emotion (and Beyond)

Darwin emphasized the shared origins and essential continuity of the emotions in humans and animals ( Darwin, 1872/2009 ). Although the nature and interpretation of animal emotion remains contentious, there is widespread consensus that some—though certainly not all—features of emotion can be modeled in animals ( Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 ; Barrett, 2017b ; Fanselow & Pennington, 2017 , 2018 ; Fox, Lapate, Shackman, & Davidson, 2018 ; LeDoux, 2014 , 2015 ; LeDoux & Hofmann, 2018 ; Panksepp, 1998 ; Pine & LeDoux, 2017 ; Rolls, 2018 ). This opens the door to addressing questions such as, Which neural systems are necessary for particular emotional responses? Which are sufficient? (e.g., Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015 ; Berridge & Robinson, 2016 ; Calhoon & Tye, 2015 ; Kringelbach & Berridge, 2012 ; Kunwar et al., 2015 ; Shackman & Fox, 2016 ; Tovote, Fadok, & Luthi, 2015 ). Two sets of contributors to the Special Issue focused on animal models of emotion and both teams highlight issues that are likely to be of interest to all students of emotion, regardless of their species of interest.

Baratta and Maier focus on a rodent model of stress resilience (Baratta & Maier, this issue ). Stress plays an important role in precipitating a variety of psychiatric illnesses (e.g., Shackman et al., 2016a ; Shackman et al., 2016b ). Everyone experiences stress from time-to-time and most individuals will experience at least one major trauma in their lifetime ( Husky, Lepine, Gasquet, & Kovess-Masfety, 2015 ; Kilpatrick et al., 2013 ). Yet the vast majority of individuals exposed to adversity, stressors, or trauma never develop psychopathology. These observations underscore the importance of developing a deeper understanding of the neural mechanisms that confer resilience. Baratta and Maier tell us that instrumental control—the opportunity to avoid shock—has profound consequences for stress reactivity, consistent with work in humans ( Salomons, Johnstone, Backonja, & Davidson, 2004 ; Salomons, Johnstone, Backonja, Shackman, & Davidson, 2007 ). Exposure to shock that is uncontrollable (i.e., unavoidable) produces a constellation of behaviors and physiological signs reminiscent of mood and anxiety disorders. These deleterious effects appear to be mediated by serotonergic cells in the dorsal raphe. The provision of instrumental control blunts these consequences and, remarkably, can even ‘immunize’ animals during future encounters with uncontrollable stress. Baratta and Maier describe on-going work to pinpoint the circuits underlying these kinds of stress buffering effects. This new evidence suggests that incoming information about the world and the body is routed through prefrontal circuits, with some involved in detecting stressor controllability and others responsible for using that information to appropriately regulate the stress response. Interestingly, this work highlights the critical functional significance of a minor anatomical projection (<5% neurons) coursing from the dorsal raphe to the prefrontal cortex. This observation underscores the hazard of over-interpreting semi-quantitative neuroanatomical tracing studies (e.g., +++ vs. +) and prematurely dismissing the importance of ‘weak’ or ‘modest’ projections, such as those linking the amygdala to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (cf. Birn et al., 2014 ; Lim, Padmala, & Pessoa, 2009 ).

Fox and Shackman review the role of the central extended amygdala (EAc) in fear and anxiety (Fox & Shackman, this issue ). They tell us that the EAc—an anatomical concept encompassing the central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce) and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST)—is an evolutionarily conserved, functionally coherent hub; one that it is anatomically poised to use information about threat, context, and internal states to initiate a range of defensive responses and assemble states of fear and anxiety. They highlight recent imaging studies in monkeys—some including nearly 600 individuals—demonstrating that elevated metabolism in the Ce and BST is associated with heightened signs of fear and anxiety in response to novelty and potential threat. This approach, which integrates naturalistic behavioral, endocrine, and neural responses (18-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography; FDG-PET) to ethologically relevant threats, merits comment. The vast majority of human imaging studies have focused on highly artificial manipulations—static faces, sounds, images, small monetary rewards, and so on—presented under unnatural conditions. These manipulations are much less arousing and engaging than the kinds of challenges routinely encountered in daily life ( Adolphs & Anderson, 2018 ; LeDoux, 2015 ; Levenson, 2011 , 2018 ; Shackman et al., 2006 ) 1 . As Nummenmaa and Saarimäki note earlier in the Special Issue (Nummenmaa & Saarimäki, this issue ), there are several strategies for addressing this challenge in the laboratory, including greater use of FDG-PET and a greater focus on more intense, ecologically relevant stimuli (e.g., thermal pain). An alternative approach is to integrate assays of brain function and behavior collected in the scanner—including differences in ‘resting-state’ function ( Fox et al., 2018 )—with measures of emotion and motivated behavior assessed under more naturalistic conditions in the laboratory (e.g., during semi-structured interactions or using commercially available virtual reality techniques; Creed & Funder, 1998 ; Kroes et al., 2017 ; Laidlaw, Foulsham, Kuhn, & Kingstone, 2011 ; Perez-Edgar et al., 2010 ; Pfeiffer, Vogeley, & Schilbach, 2013 ; Thomson et al., in press ) or in the field ( Anderson, Monroy, & Keltner, 2018 ). Recent work combining fMRI with experience-sampling techniques underscores the potential of this approach for identifying the neural systems associated with naturalistic variation in emotion and motivated behavior ( Forbes et al., 2009 ; Heller et al., 2015 ; Lopez, Hofmann, Wagner, Kelley, & Heatherton, 2014 ).

From a conceptual perspective, Fox and Shackman remind us that the words scientists use to describe emotion have the power to illuminate or to obfuscate ( Poldrack & Yarkoni, 2016 ; Schaafsma, Pfaff, Spunt, & Adolphs, 2015 ). Here, the problem is that lay people, scholars in other areas, clinicians, psychometricians, and even domain experts often use ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ in interchangeable or inconsistent ways ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ; Cowen & Keltner, 2017 ; Gaylin, 1979 ; Kotov et al., 2017 ; Watson, Stanton, & Clark, 2017 ). This problem is not specific to fear and anxiety. Our words for emotion—anger, fear, disgust, joy, sadness and so on—and even more recently coined phrases, like ‘uncertain threat,’ can, and often do, refer to multiple phenomena ( Barrett, 2017b ; Kagan, 2010 ; Shackman et al., 2016b ; Wager et al., 2018 ). While there will always be a place for verbal shorthand, we urge emotion researchers to be more mindful of nomenclature and the potential for misunderstanding.

Fox and Shackman make it clear that the Ce and the BST are functionally and anatomically complex (for related perspectives, see Satpute et al., this issue ; Baratta & Maier, this issue ). Like the nucleus accumbens, periaqueductal gray, and other subcortical structures involved in emotion and motivation, they can be partitioned into multiple subregions, each containing intermingled cell types with distinct, even opposing functional roles (e.g., anxiolytic vs anxiogenic). As a consequence, research that relies on lesions, pharmacological inactivation approaches (e.g., muscimol microinjections), or conventional brain imaging techniques will necessarily reflect a mixture of cells or signals. Baratta and Maier and Fox and Shackman describe how recently developed opto- and chemogenetic tools provide new opportunities for deciphering this complexity and discovering the specific circuit components that control responses to threat and reward. While unfamiliar to many imagers, developing a basic understanding of these methods is a key step to dissolving the kinds of artificial academic silos that separate researchers focused on human and animal emotion.

Fox and Shackman suggest that the tantalizing discoveries afforded by opto- and chemogenetic techniques pose a critical challenge for affective neuroscience. Are the mechanisms conserved across species? Which molecules and micro-circuits underlie differences in fMRI measures of activation? How do they influence the kinds of distributed networks that have been linked to adaptive and maladaptive emotion in humans? “Reconciling these two levels of analysis—one global, the other local—is mandatory, if we are to develop a complete and clinically useful understanding of” emotion (Fox & Shackman, this issue ) . Addressing this challenge is difficult, but can be potentially overcome by combining focal perturbations with whole-brain imaging in rodents or monkeys.

Conclusions

Understanding how emotions emerge from the brain is a major challenge. Throughout this review, we have outlined some strategies and directions for future research. Among these, several stand out:

• The importance of developing robust and generalizable (i.e., assay- and induction-general) neural models of emotion perception, expression, and experience. Models that are firmly grounded in variation in emotional behavior or experience are likely to be especially fruitful ( Kragel et al., 2018b ).
• The importance of testing whether these models predict real-world emotion.
• The importance of understanding how such models evolve across the lifespan and how they can be implicitly and explicitly regulated by the self and others.
• The importance of testing the necessity and sufficiency of the regions, circuits, and patterns implicated in models of emotion derived from neuroimaging research.
• The importance of bridging the gap separating the mechanistic insights afforded by animal models (i.e., molecules, cell types, and micro-circuits) from human imaging research (i.e., regional activation and inter-regional connectivity).

Understanding the nature and organizational principles of the emotional brain will require substantial time and resources, new kinds of multi-disciplinary collaborations, and new kinds of training models ( Fox et al., 2018a ; Vu et al., 2018 ). Addressing this challenge is important. Some of the most common, costly, and intractable illnesses—anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, substance abuse, autism, chronic pain, and so on—involve prominent emotional disturbances. Collectively, these debilitating disorders impose a staggering burden on global public health and the economy and existing treatments are far from curative ( Bitsko et al., 2018 ; Chisholm et al., 2016 ; Craske et al., 2017 ; DiLuca & Olesen, 2014 ; Global Burden of Disease Collaborators, 2016 ; Grant et al., 2017 ; Hasin et al., 2018 ; Otte et al., 2016 ; Salomon et al., 2015 ; U. S. Burden of Disease Collaborators et al., 2018 ; Weinberger et al., 2018 ), underscoring the importance of accelerating efforts to understand the basic neuroscience of emotion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (DA035484, DA040717, MH076136, MH107444) and University of Maryland, College Park. We appreciate the assistance of L. Friedman, K. DeYoung, and J. Smith, as well as critical feedback from A. Fox and P. Kragel. R. Adolphs and D. Anderson suggested the Inside Out simile.

Authors declare no conflicts of interest.

1 For example, the vast majority of imaging studies that employ noxious shock allow subjects to self-select the maximal intensity, instructing them to pick the highest level that is ‘uncomfortable or unpleasant but not actually painful’ ( Balderston, Liu, Roberson-Nay, Ernst, & Grillon, 2017 ; Kroes, Dunsmoor, Mackey, McClay, & Phelps, 2017 ; Najafi, Kinnison, & Pessoa, 2017 )

• Adolphs R (2016). Human lesion studies in the 21st century. Neuron , 90 , 1151–1153. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adolphs R (2017a). How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 12 , 24–31. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adolphs R (2017b). Reply to Barrett: affective neuroscience needs objective criteria for emotions. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 12 , 32–33. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adolphs R, & Anderson DJ (2018). The neuroscience of emotion. A new synthesis . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). [ Google Scholar ]
• Anderson CL, Monroy M, & Keltner D (2018). Emotion in the wilds of nature: The coherence and contagion of fear during threatening group-based outdoors experiences. Emotion , 18 , 355–368. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Balderston NL, Liu J, Roberson-Nay R, Ernst M, & Grillon C (2017). The relationship between dlPFC activity during unpredictable threat and CO2-induced panic symptoms. Transl Psychiatry , 7 , 1266. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF (2017a). Functionalism cannot save the classical view of emotion. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 12 , 34–36. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF (2017b). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain . New York: Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF (2017c). The theory of constructed emotion: An active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 12 , 1–23. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF (2018a). Emotions are constructed with interoception and concepts within a predicting brain. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 33–38). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF (2018b). Variation and degeneracy in the brain basis of emotion. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 108–112). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Khan Z, Dy J, & Brooks D (2018). Nature of emotion categories: Comment on Cowen and Keltner. Trends Cogn Sci , 22 , 97–99. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Berridge KC, & Kringelbach ML (2015). Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron , 86 , 646–664. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Berridge KC, & Robinson TE (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. American Psychologist , 71 , 670–679. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Birn RM, Shackman AJ, Oler JA, Williams LE, McFarlin DR, Rogers GM, . . . Kalin NH (2014). Evolutionarily conserved dysfunction of prefrontal‐amygdalar connectivity in early‐life anxiety. Molecular Psychiatry , 19 , 915–922. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bitsko RH, Holbrook JR, Ghandour RM, Blumberg SJ, Visser SN, Perou R, & Walkup JT (2018). Epidemiology and impact of health care provider-diagnosed anxiety and depression among US children. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics , 39 ( 5 ), 395–403. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Braunstein LM, Gross JJ, & Ochsner KN (2017). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a multi-level framework. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci , 12 , 1545–1557. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Buhle JT, Silvers JA, Wager TD, Lopez R, Onyemekwu C, Kober H, . . . Ochsner KN (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: A meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex , 24 , 2981–2990. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Calhoon GG, & Tye KM (2015). Resolving the neural circuits of anxiety. Nature Neuroscience , 18 , 1394–1404. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chang LJ, Gianaros PJ, Manuck SB, Krishnan A, & Wager TD (2015). A sensitive and specific neural signature for picture-induced negative affect. PLoS Biol , 13 , e1002180. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chisholm D, Sweeny K, Sheehan P, Rasmussen B, Smit F, Cuijpers P, & Saxena S (2016). Scaling-up treatment of depression and anxiety: a global return on investment analysis. Lancet Psychiatry , 3 , 415–424. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Clark-Polner E, Johnson TD, & Barrett LF (2017). Multivoxel pattern analysis does not provide evidence to support the existence of basic emotions. Cerebral Cortex , 27 , 1944–1948. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Coan JA, & Allen JJB (2007). Handbook of emotion elicitation and assessment . NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Connor-Smith JK, & Flachsbart C (2007). Relations between personality and coping: a meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 93 , 1080–1107. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cordaro DT, Fridlund AJ, Keltner D, & Russell JA (2015). The great expressions debate: Keltner and Cordaro vs. Fridlund vs. Russell. Emotion Researcher. The official newsletter of the International Society for Research on Emotion . [ Google Scholar ]
• Cowen AS, & Keltner D (2017). Self-report captures 27 distinct categories of emotion bridged by continuous gradients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 114 , E7900–E7909. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cowen AS, & Keltner D (2018). Clarifying the conceptualization, dimensionality, and structure of emotion: Response to Barrett and colleagues. Trends Cogn Sci . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Craske MG, Stein MB, Eley TC, Milad MR, Holmes A, Rapee RM, & Wittchen HU (2017). Anxiety disorders. Nat Rev Dis Primers , 3 , 17024. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Creed AT, & Funder DC (1998). Social anxiety: from the inside and outside. Personality and Individual Differences , 25 , 19–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Darwin C (1872/2009). The expression of the emotions in man and animals (4th ed.). NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• DiLuca M, & Olesen J (2014). The cost of brain diseases: a burden or a challenge? Neuron , 82 , 1205–1208. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Doré BP, Silvers JA, & Ochsner KN (2016). Toward a personalized science of emotion regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass , 10 / 4 , 171–187. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dubois J, Oya H, Tyszka JM, Howard M 3rd, Eberhardt F, & Adolphs R (in press). Causal mapping of emotion networks in the human brain: Framework and initial findings. Neuropsychologia . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duff EP, Vennart W, Wise RG, Howard MA, Harris RE, Lee M, . . . Smith SM (2015). Learning to identify CNS drug action and efficacy using multistudy fMRI data. Sci Transl Med , 7 , 274ra216. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ekman P, & Cordaro D (2011). What is meant by calling emotions basic. Emotion Review , 3 , 364–370. [ Google Scholar ]
• Engen HG, & Singer T (2018). Deconstructing social emotions: Empathy and compassion and their relationship to prosocial behavior. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 233–237). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Etkin A, Buchel C, & Gross JJ (2015). The neural bases of emotion regulation. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience ( 11 ), 693–700. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fanselow MS, & Pennington ZT (2017). The danger of LeDoux and Pine’s two-system framework for fear. American Journal of Psychiatry , 174 , 1120–1121. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fanselow MS, & Pennington ZT (2018). A return to the psychiatric dark ages with a two-system framework for fear. Behaviour Research and Therapy , 100 , 24–29. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Feinstein JS, Khalsa SS, Salomons TV, Prkachin KM, Frey-Law LA, Lee JE, . . . Rudrauf D (2016). Preserved emotional awareness of pain in a patient with extensive bilateral damage to the insula, anterior cingulate, and amygdala. Brain Struct Funct , 221 , 1499–1511. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Forbes EE, Hariri AR, Martin SL, Silk JS, Moyles DL, Fisher PM, . . . Dahl RE (2009). Altered striatal activation predicting real-world positive affect in adolescent major depressive disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry , 166 , 64–73. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox AS, Lapate RC, Davidson RJ, & Shackman AJ (2018). Challenges and opportunities for the affective sciences. PsyArXiv . [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox AS, Lapate RC, Davidson RJ, & Shackman AJ (2018a). The nature of emotion: A research agenda for the 21st century. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 403–417). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (2018). The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox AS, Oler JA, Birn RM, Shackman AJ, Alexander AL, & Kalin NH (2018). Functional connectivity within the primate extended amygdala is heritable and predicts early-life anxious temperament. Journal of Neuroscience , 38 , 7611–7621. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox AS, & Shackman AJ (2018). How are emotions embodied in the social world. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 237–239). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Freeman JB (2018). The dynamic-interactive models approach to the perception of facial emotion. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 268–274). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Freeman JB (in press). Doing psychological science by hand. Current Driections in Psychological Science . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Friston KJ, Joffily M, Barrett LF, & Seth AK (2018). Active inference and emotion. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 28–33). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaylin W (1979). Feelings: Our vital signs . NY: Harper & Row. [ Google Scholar ]
• Glasser MF, Smith SM, Marcus DS, Andersson JL, Auerbach EJ, Behrens TE, . . . Van Essen DC (2016). The Human Connectome Project’s neuroimaging approach. Nature Neuroscience , 19 , 1175–1187. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Global Burden of Disease Collaborators. (2016). Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 310 diseases and injuries, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Lancet , 388 , 1545–1602. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldsmith HH (2018). Everything develops during emotional development. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 376–379). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Grant BF, Chou SP, Saha TD, Pickering RP, Kerridge BT, Ruan WJ, . . . Hasin DS (2017). Prevalence of 12-month alcohol use, high-risk drinking, and DSM-IV Alcohol Use Disorder in the United States, 2001–2002 to 2012–2013: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. JAMA Psychiatry , 74 , 911–923. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gross JJ (2015a). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry , 26 , 1–26. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gross JJ (2015b). The extended process model of emotion regulation: Elaborations, applications, and future directions. Psychological Inquiry , 26 , 130–137. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hasin DS, Sarvet AL, Meyers JL, Saha TD, Ruan WJ, Stohl M, & Grant BF (2018). Epidemiology of Adult DSM-5 Major Depressive Disorder and Its Specifiers in the United States. JAMA Psychiatry . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Heller AS, Fox AS, Wing E, Mayer K, Vack NJ, & Davidson RJ (2015). The neurodynamics of affect in the laboratory predicts persistence of real-world emotional responses. Journal of Neuroscience , 35 , 10503–10509. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hur J, Kaplan CM, Smith JF, Bradford DE, Fox AS, Curtin JJ, & Shackman AJ (in press-a). Acute alcohol administration dampens central extended amygdala reactivity. Scientific Reports . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hur J, Tillman RM, Fox AS, & Shackman AJ (in press-b). The value of clinical and translational neuroscience approaches to psychiatric illness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Husky MM, Lepine JP, Gasquet I, & Kovess-Masfety V (2015). Exposure to traumatic events and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in France: Results from the WMH survey. Journal of Traumatic Stress , 28 , 275–282. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Institute of Medicine. (2013). Improving the utility and translation of animal models for nervous system disorders: Workshop summary . Washington, DC: National Academies Press. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Institute of Medicine. (2014). Improving and accelerating therapeutic development for nervous system disorders . Washington, DC: National Academies Press. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kagan J (2010). Some plain words on emotion. Emotion Review , 3 , 221–224. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kenrick DT, & Funder DC (1988). Profiting from controversy. Lessons from the person-situation debate. American Psychologist , 43 , 23–34. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kilpatrick DG, Resnick HS, Milanak ME, Miller MW, Keyes KM, & Friedman MJ (2013). National estimates of exposure to traumatic events and PTSD prevalence using DSM-IV and DSM-5 criteria. Journal of Traumatic Stress , 26 , 537–547. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim CK, Adhikari A, & Deisseroth K (2017). Integration of optogenetics with complementary methodologies in systems neuroscience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 18 , 222–235. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kotov R, Krueger RF, Watson D, Achenbach TM, Althoff RR, Bagby RM, . . . Zimmerman M (2017). The hierarchical taxonomy of psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 126 , 454–477. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kragel PA, Kano M, Van Oudenhove L, Ly HG, Dupont P, Rubio A, . . . Wager TD (2018a). Generalizable representations of pain, cognitive control, and negative emotion in medial frontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience , 21 , 283–289. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kragel PA, Koban L, Barrett LF, & Wager TD (2018b). Representation, pattern information, and brain signatures: From neurons to neuroimaging. Neuron , 99 , 257–273. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kragel PA, & LaBar KS (2016). Decoding the nature of emotion in the brain. Trends Cogn Sci , 20 , 444–455. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kringelbach ML, & Berridge KC (2012). The joyful mind. Scientific American , 307 , 40–45. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kroes MCW, Dunsmoor JE, Mackey WE, McClay M, & Phelps EA (2017). Context conditioning in humans using commercially available immersive Virtual Reality. Sci Rep , 7 , 8640. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kunwar PS, Zelikowsky M, Remedios R, Cai H, Yilmaz M, Meister M, & Anderson DJ (2015). Ventromedial hypothalamic neurons control a defensive emotion state. Elife , 4 . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Laidlaw KE, Foulsham T, Kuhn G, & Kingstone A (2011). Potential social interactions are important to social attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 108 , 5548–5553. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lang PJ, & Bradley MM (2018). What is an emotion? A natural science perspective. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 11–14). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lapate RC, & Fox AS (2018). How and why are emotions communicated? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 274–276). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lapate RC, & Shackman AJ (2018a). What develops in emotional development? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 399–401). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lapate RC, & Shackman AJ (2018b). What is an emotion? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 38–43). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• LeDoux JE (2014). Coming to terms with fear. Proceedings of the National Acadademy of Sciences U S A , 111 , 2871–2878. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• LeDoux JE (2015). Anxious. Using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety . New York, NY: Viking. [ Google Scholar ]
• LeDoux JE, & Hofmann SG (2018). The subjective experience of emotion: a fearful view. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences , 19 , 1–6. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lee FS, Heimer H, Giedd JN, Lein ES, Sestan N, Weinberger DR, & Casey BJ (2014). Mental health. Adolescent mental health--opportunity and obligation. Science , 346 , 547–549. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Levenson RW (2011). Basic emotion questions. Emotion Review , 3 , 379–386. [ Google Scholar ]
• Levenson RW (2018). What is the added value of studying the brain for understanding emotion? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 80–84). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lim SL, Padmala S, & Pessoa L (2009). Segregating the significant from the mundane on a moment-to-moment basis via direct and indirect amygdala contributions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 106 , 16841–16846. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lopez RB, Hofmann W, Wagner DD, Kelley WM, & Heatherton TF (2014). Neural predictors of giving in to temptation in daily life. Psychol Sci , 25 ( 7 ), 1337–1344. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Markou A, Chiamulera C, Geyer MA, Tricklebank M, & Steckler T (2009). Removing obstacles in neuroscience drug discovery: the future path for animal models. Neuropsychopharmacology , 34 , 74–89. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mattek AM, Wolford GL, & Whalen PJ (2017). A mathematical model captures the structure of subjective affect. Perspectives on Psychological Science , 12 , 508–526. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McLaughlin KA (2016). Future directions in childhood adversity and youth psychopathology. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology , 45 , 361–382. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Motzkin JC, Philippi CL, Oler JA, Kalin NH, Baskaya MK, & Koenigs M (2015). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage alters resting blood flow to the bed nucleus of stria terminalis. Cortex , 64 , 281–288. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Najafi M, Kinnison J, & Pessoa L (2017). Intersubject brain network organization during dynamic anxious anticipation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience , 11 . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Otte C, Gold SM, Penninx BW, Pariante CM, Etkin A, Fava M, . . . Schatzberg AF (2016). Major depressive disorder. Nat Rev Dis Primers , 2 , 16065. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Panksepp J (1998). Affective neuroscience. The foundations of human and animal emotions . New York: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Paulus MP, Feinstein JS, Castillo G, Simmons AN, & Stein MB (2005). Dose-dependent decrease of activation in bilateral amygdala and insula by lorazepam during emotion processing. Archives of General Psychiatry , 62 , 282–288. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Perez-Edgar K, McDermott JN, Korelitz K, Degnan KA, Curby TW, Pine DS, & Fox NA (2010). Patterns of sustained attention in infancy shape the developmental trajectory of social behavior from toddlerhood through adolescence. Developmental Psychology , 46 , 1723–1730. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pessoa L (2013). The cognitive-emotional brain: From interactions to integration . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pessoa L, & Adolphs R (2010). Emotion processing and the amygdala: from a ‘low road’ to ‘many roads’ of evaluating biological significance. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience , 11 , 773–783. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pfeiffer UJ, Vogeley K, & Schilbach L (2013). From gaze cueing to dual eye-tracking: novel approaches to investigate the neural correlates of gaze in social interaction. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews , 37 , 2516–2528. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pine DS, & LeDoux JE (2017). Elevating the role of subjective experience in the clinic: Response to Fanselow and Pennington. American Journal of Psychiatry , 174 , 1121–1122. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Poldrack RA, & Yarkoni T (2016). From brain maps to cognitive ontologies: Informatics and the search for mental structure. Annual Review of Psychology , 67 , 587–612. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reeck C, Ames DR, & Ochsner KN (2016). The social regulation of emotion: An integrative, cross-disciplinary model. Trends Cogn Sci , 20 , 47–63. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rime B (2009). Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review. Emotion Review , 1 , 60–85. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rolls ET (2005). Emotion explained . NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rolls ET (2018). What are emotional states and what are their functions. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 19–28). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosenberg MD, Casey BJ, & Holmes AJ (2018). Prediction complements explanation in understanding the developing brain. Nat Commun , 9 , 589. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Saarimaki H, Ejtehadian LF, Glerean E, Jaaskelainen IP, Vuilleumier P, Sams M, & Nummenmaa L (2018). Distributed affective space represents multiple emotion categories across the human brain. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci , 13 , 471–482. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salomon JA, Haagsma JA, Davis A, de Noordhout CM, Polinder S, Havelaar AH, . . . Vos T (2015). Disability weights for the Global Burden of Disease 2013 study. Lancet Glob Health , 3 , e712–723. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salomons TV, Iannetti GD, Liang M, & Wood JN (2016). The “pain matrix” in pain-free individuals. JAMA Neurol , 73 , 755–756. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salomons TV, Johnstone T, Backonja MM, & Davidson RJ (2004). Perceived controllability modulates the neural response to pain. Journal of Neuroscience , 24 , 7199–7203. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salomons TV, Johnstone T, Backonja MM, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (2007). Individual differences in the effects of perceived controllability on pain perception: critical role of the prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 19 , 993–1003. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schaafsma SM, Pfaff DW, Spunt RP, & Adolphs R (2015). Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind. Trends Cogn Sci , 19 , 65–72. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, & Fox AS (2016). Contributions of the central extended amygdala to fear and anxiety. Journal of Neuroscience , 36 , 8050–8063. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, & Fox AS (2018). Getting serious about variation: Lessons for clinical neuroscience. Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 22 , 368–369. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, Fox AS, & Seminowicz DA (2015). The cognitive-emotional brain: Opportunities and challenges for understanding neuropsychiatric disorders. Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 38 , e86. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, Kaplan CM, Stockbridge MD, Tillman RM, Tromp DPM, Fox AS, & Gamer M (2016a). The neurobiology of anxiety and attentional biases to threat: Implications for understanding anxiety disorders in adults and youth. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology , 7 , 311–342. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, & Lapate RC (2018a). How are emotions regulated by context and cognition? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 177–179). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, & Lapate RC (2018b). How do emotion and cognition interact? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 209–211). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, Sarinopoulos I, Maxwell JS, Pizzagalli DA, Lavric A, & Davidson RJ (2006). Anxiety selectively disrupts visuospatial working memory. Emotion , 6 , 40–61. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, Tromp DPM, Stockbridge MD, Kaplan CM, Tillman RM, & Fox AS (2016b). Dispositional negativity: An integrative psychological and neurobiological perspective. Psychological Bulletin , 142 , 1275–1314. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shackman AJ, Weinstein JS, Hudja SN, Bloomer CD, Barstead MG, Fox AS, & Lemay EP (2018). Dispositional negativity in the wild: Social environment governs momentary emotional experience. Emotion , 18 , 707–724. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sheppes G, Suri G, & Gross JJ (2015). Emotion regulation and psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology , 11 , 379–405. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shiner RL (2018). Stability and change in emotion-relevant personality traits in childhood and adolescence. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 61–64). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Siegel EH, Sands MK, Van den Noortgate W, Condon P, Chang Y, Dy J, . . . Barrett LF (2018). Emotion fingerprints or emotion populations? A meta-analytic investigation of autonomic features of emotion categories. Psychological Bulletin , 144 , 343–393. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Somerville LH, & McLaughlin KA (2018). Normative trajectories and sources of psychopathology risk in adolescence. In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (2nd ed., pp. 382–386). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stolier RM, & Freeman JB (2017). A neural mechanism of social categorization. Journal of Neuroscience , 37 , 5711–5721. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stolier RM, Hehman E, & Freeman JB (2018). A dynamic structure of social trait space. Trends Cogn Sci , 22 , 197–200. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomson ND, Aboutanos M, Kiehl KA, Neumann C, Galusha C, & Fanti KA (in press). Physiological reactivity in response to a fear-induced virtual reality experience: Associations with psychopathic traits. Psychophysiology , e13276. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tovote P, Fadok JP, & Luthi A (2015). Neuronal circuits for fear and anxiety. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience , 16 , 317–331. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• U. S. Burden of Disease Collaborators, Mokdad AH, Ballestros K, Echko M, Glenn S, Olsen HE, . . . Murray CJL (2018). The State of US Health, 1990–2016: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Among US States. JAMA , 319 , 1444–1472. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Uddin LQ, & Karlsgodt KH (2018). Future directions for examination of brain networks in neurodevelopmental disorders. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology , 47 , 483–497. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Urban DJ, & Roth BL (2015). DREADDs (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs): chemogenetic tools with therapeutic utility. Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology , 55 , 399–417. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vu MT, Adali T, Ba D, Buzsaki G, Carlson D, Heller K, . . . Dzirasa K (2018). A shared vision for machine learning in neuroscience. Journal of Neuroscience , 38 , 1601–1607. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wager TD, Atlas LY, Lindquist MA, Roy M, Woo CW, & Kross E (2013). An fMRI-based neurologic signature of physical pain. New England Journal of Medicine , 368 , 1388–1397. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wager TD, Krishnan A, & Hitchcock E (2018). How are emotions organized in the brain? In Fox AS, Lapate RC, Shackman AJ, & Davidson RJ (Eds.), The nature of emotion. Fundamental questions (pp. 112–118). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Watson D, Stanton K, & Clark LA (2017). Self-report indicators of negative valence constructs within the research domain criteria (RDoC): A critical review. Journal of Affective Disorders , 216 , 58–69. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinberger AH, Gbedemah M, Martinez AM, Nash D, Galea S, & Goodwin RD (2018). Trends in depression prevalence in the USA from 2005 to 2015: widening disparities in vulnerable groups. Psychological Medicine , 48 , 1308–1315. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Woo CW, Chang LJ, Lindquist MA, & Wager TD (2017). Building better biomarkers: brain models in translational neuroimaging. Nature Neuroscience , 20 , 365–377. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Yik M, Russell JA, & Steiger JH (2011). A 12-point circumplex structure of core affect. Emotion , 11 , 705–731. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zaki J, Wager TD, Singer T, Keysers C, & Gazzola V (2016). The anatomy of suffering: Understanding the relationship between nociceptive and empathic pain. Trends Cogn Sci , 20 , 249–259. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zaki J, & Williams WC (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion , 13 , 803–810. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zunhammer M, Bingel U, Wager TD, & The Placebo Imaging Consortium. (in press). Placebo effects on the neurologic pain signature: A meta-analysis of individual participant functional magnetic resonance imaging data. JAMA Neurol . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

Neuroscience - Science topic

• May 29, 2024

• Jun 11, 2024
• 5 Recommendations

• Jun 7, 2024
• 0 Recommendations

• asked a question related to Neuroscience
• May 24, 2024

• Cropped for questi on.png 871.07 KB

• Jun 6, 2024

• Jun 10, 2016

• May 31, 2024

• May 4, 2024

• May 21, 2024
• 30 Recommendations

• May 13, 2024
• May 16, 2024

• May 10, 2024

• May 7, 2024

• Apr 22, 2024
• NEUROCIENCIA Y TRANSDISCIPLINARIED AD.pdf 345.10 KB

• Apr 30, 2024

• Apr 24, 2024

• Apr 27, 2024
• 2 Recommendations

• Jun 19, 2023
• Apr 6, 2024
• 12 Recommendations
• Dec 18, 2023

• Apr 2, 2024

• Apr 4, 2024
• Mar 24, 2024

• Apr 1, 2024
• 15 Recommendations
• Mar 23, 2024

• Mar 31, 2024

• Feb 16, 2022

• Mar 25, 2024

• Feb 27, 2024

• Feb 28, 2024
• Feb 12, 2024
• Feb 20, 2024

• Feb 16, 2024

• Feb 18, 2024
• 14 Recommendations

• Sep 16, 2023

• Feb 13, 2024

• Jan 30, 2024
• Feb 4, 2024

• Jun 12, 2013

• Jan 23, 2024
• Phosphate-Buffered Saline (PBS) : PBS is a widely used vehicle for ICV injection of AAV vectors. Its physiological pH and osmolarity are compatible with brain tissue, minimizing the risk of inflammation or damage upon injection. Additionally, PBS does not interfere with the stability or activity of AAV vectors.
• Artificial Cerebrospinal Fluid (aCSF) : aCSF closely mimics the composition of natural cerebrospinal fluid. It is often preferred for ICV injections as it maintains the ion balance and minimizes potential damage to brain tissue. aCSF is especially suitable for experiments requiring large injection volumes or longer-term studies.
• Saline : Normal saline (0.9% NaCl) is another common vehicle. Like PBS, its isotonic nature makes it suitable for use in the brain. However, it lacks the buffering capacity of PBS, which might be a consideration depending on the AAV vector's stability.
• Other Considerations : It's essential to ensure that the vehicle is free of endotoxins and other contaminants that could provoke an immune response or interfere with the vector. The vehicle should also be compatible with any other components in the AAV preparation, such as buffering agents or stabilizers.
• Optimization for Specific AAV Serotypes : Different AAV serotypes might require slight adjustments in the vehicle composition for optimal performance. Therefore, empirical testing or literature consultation for specific serotype-vehicle interactions is advised.
• Protocol_library_for_Gene_Thera py.pdf 9.02 MB

• Jan 17, 2024

• 16 Recommendations

• Nov 28, 2023

• Nov 30, 2023

• Nov 16, 2023

• Nov 18, 2023

• Oct 10, 2023

• Nov 17, 2023

• Dec 11, 2015

• Nov 14, 2023

• Nov 6, 2023
• libroPsicoteologíaTom o1.pdf 2.85 MB

• Nov 2, 2023

• data.p ng 166.50 KB

• Oct 11, 2023

• Sep 19, 2023
• Sep 23, 2023

• Aug 29, 2023

• Aug 31, 2023

• Aug 2, 2023

• Aug 4, 2023
• 22 Recommendations

• Jul 28, 2023
• For some slides, the process included the consecutive rinsing with higher percentages of alcohol and then with xylenes
• For others, the process only involved rinsing with deionized water for 2 minutes
• For some slides, hardening version of the mounting media was used
• For others, the non-hardening version of it was used and nail polish was added to the edge of coverslips to prevent sliding

• Aug 1, 2023

• Jul 5, 2023

• Jul 11, 2023
• 6 Recommendations

• Jun 12, 2023

• Jun 30, 2023
• 3 Recommendations

• May 26, 2023

• Jun 26, 2023

• Jun 21, 2023
• Jun 22, 2023

• Jun 10, 2023
• Jun 15, 2023

• Jun 9, 2023

• Jun 6, 2023

• May 30, 2023

• Jun 3, 2023

• Jan 31, 2018

• May 31, 2023

• May 3, 2023

• May 5, 2023

• Oct 8, 2021

• Apr 23, 2023

• Nov 27, 2018

• Apr 22, 2023

• Apr 13, 2023
• Apr 14, 2023

• Mar 20, 2023

• Apr 5, 2023
• Apr 10, 2023
• Apr 7, 2023

• Apr 8, 2023

• Mar 28, 2023

• Mar 27, 2023

• Apr 2, 2023

• Mar 21, 2023

• Nov 27, 2022
• Mar 8, 2023
• 10 Recommendations
• Mar 7, 2023
• 11 Recommendations
• Feb 12, 2023

• Feb 14, 2023

• Jan 4, 2023

• Feb 8, 2023

• Jan 21, 2023

• Jan 29, 2023

• Dec 13, 2022

• Dec 14, 2022

• Sep 18, 2022

• Nov 14, 2022
• 4 Recommendations

• Nov 7, 2022
• Nov 8, 2022

• Nov 3, 2022

• Nov 4, 2022
• 20 Recommendations

• Oct 5, 2022
• Oct 26, 2022

• Sep 20, 2022
• Oct 1, 2022

• Jun 14, 2022

• Aug 8, 2022

• Jul 31, 2022

• Jun 5, 2013

• Jul 20, 2022

• Jul 17, 2022

• Jul 18, 2022

• Jul 12, 2022

• Jun 30, 2022

• Jul 6, 2022

• Jun 25, 2022

• Data_Exampl es.png 539.45 KB
• Jun 26, 2022
• 27 Recommendations

• Apr 10, 2022

• Apr 18, 2022

• Apr 11, 2022

• Apr 13, 2022
• Mar 31, 2022
• Apr 2, 2022

• Feb 4, 2022

• Mar 23, 2022

• Jul 8, 2019

• Mar 18, 2022
• 8 Recommendations

• Aug 24, 2021

• Mar 6, 2022
• 104 Recommendations

• Feb 14, 2022

• Feb 21, 2022

• Feb 13, 2022

• Dec 7, 2020

• Jan 28, 2022

• Jan 27, 2022

• Feb 29, 2016

• Jan 11, 2022

• Dec 30, 2021
• Jan 1, 2022

• Aug 3, 2013

• Dec 20, 2021

• Nov 29, 2021
• Dec 18, 2021

• Dec 8, 2021

• Nov 12, 2021

• Nov 8, 2021

• Nov 11, 2021
• 7 Recommendations

• Oct 28, 2021

• May 24, 2021

• Oct 26, 2021

• Nov 2, 2021

• Mar 31, 2014

• Oct 27, 2021
• Oct 21, 2021

• 28 Recommendations
• Oct 2, 2021

• Oct 20, 2021

• Oct 1, 2021

• Apr 19, 2021

• Oct 17, 2021
• 200 Recommendations
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

• Write my thesis
• Thesis writers
• Buy thesis papers
• Bachelor thesis
• Master's thesis
• Thesis editing services
• Thesis proofreading services
• Buy a thesis online
• Write my dissertation
• Dissertation proposal help
• Pay for dissertation
• Custom dissertation
• Dissertation help online
• Buy dissertation online
• Cheap dissertation
• Dissertation editing services
• Write my research paper
• Buy research paper online
• Pay for research paper
• Research paper help
• Order research paper
• Custom research paper
• Cheap research paper
• Research papers for sale
• Thesis subjects
• How It Works

120+ Neuroscience Research Topics: Explore the Fascinating World

The study of neuroscience explores the intricate functions of the human brain and the nervous system. However, one of the main requirements students need to pass this field is to do numerous neuroscience research topics. To achieve this, you need an excellent research topic.

The Best Neuroscience Research Topics for Exam

Simple neuroscience topics for beginners, very interesting neuroscience topics, outstanding neuroscience research topics for high school students.

• Great Neuroscience Research Topics for STEM Students 

Cool Neuroscience Topics About Social Media

• Leading Neuroscience Anatomy Research Paper Topics 

The Best Neurobiology Research Topics

Hot neuropsychology research paper topics, biochemistry topics in neuropsychology.

Our company understands that creating a great topic in cognitive neuroscience takes work. That is why we have compiled a list of 120+ cognition research topics you can choose from. A good research topic will help you develop critical thinking and research skills that will help you perform better academically.

Do you have an exam coming up? Remember that the neuroscience topic you choose will impact the direction of your research, impacting the results you get. Here is a list of argumentative essay topics you can use in your exam.

• Why are some people geniuses?
• Brain dead and its technical aspects
• Ways that the media affects the human brain
• A look at effective training methods to use on people with brain injury
• Aging: Does it cause memory loss?
• What makes a person insane
• The difference between mental illness and depression
• How does breathing impact human memory?
• What is the link between gut bacteria and anxiety?
• Is it true that exercise can help reduce the pressure of depression?
• What is the link between free will, the human brain, and our emotions?
• Should drivers with brain injuries be charged for road accidents?

Even beginner students have to do research which requires them to come up with simple but engaging topics. Here are great simple topics that introduce the fundamental principles and concepts.

• Ways that social deprivation can hurt brain development.
• How does excess eating of sugars alter your brain?
• At what age is the brain wholly developed?
• How does the brain develop sensory information?
• A look at the brain sleep-wake cycle
• In what ways does music affect the brain?
• What is the science between memory and forgetting?
• A look at how the brain processes taste and smell
• What are the brain’s visual processing abilities?
• How does the brain process pain?
• How does trauma affect the brain?
• Do video games affect the brain?

Are you searching for exciting research topics to use in your essay? Consider using social media research topics , including how online interaction can impact brain function and behavior. Find interesting neurology research topics below.

• What are the effects of social media on the brain reward system
• How does social media impact empathy?
• Can social media affect mental health and well-being?
• A review of the effects of social media and loneliness
• A look at the effects of social media use and body image dissatisfaction
• How does a social medium promote and inhibit creativity?
• A look at social media and social cognition
• How does social media impact social relationships?
• A look at how social media impacts stress and stress response systems
• How can social media impact socialization and social norms
• Ways that social media impacts brain plasticity
• Ways that social media impacts attention and focus

If you do your research right, it is possible to get excellent and cool neuroscience topics for high school students. Check out the following great ideas you can use.

• How does virtual reality affect the brain?
• A look at the neural basis of creativity
• Does stress affect neurodegenerative disease
• Review of how exercise impacts brain plasticity
• The various ways to improve memory
• A review of how the memory works
• What effects does mindful meditation have on the brain?
• The various ways that childhood trauma can affect brain development
• What are the basic human personality types
• Reasons to consider electrostimulation of the brain
• Does fish oil help brain development
• What happens when someone hallucinates?

Great Neuroscience Research Topics for STEM Students

Getting an excellent neuroscience research topic for STEM students requires interesting study topics. Ensure that you focus on how the human brain works and its complexity. Discussed are great ideas to use.

• What is the definition of cognitive neuroscience?
• Everything you need to know about dementia
• What role do epigenetics play in brain development
• In what ways can neurotransmitters impact mood and behavior?
• Review of brain development from birth to age 2
• What is the science behind pain
• A look at stem cells
• Mapping of the human brain
• What is the role of neural networks in complex cognitive processes?
• Does nutrition impact brain health?
• ways that environmental toxins impact the brain and potential intervention
• Study of the brains of people with high IQ

Have you started your thesis statement about social media and how it impacts brain function? If not, here are exciting neuroscience topics to choose from.

• How does social media impact brain function or mental health?
• Is it true that spending much time on social media affects your brain?
• Research on how social media affects the developing brain
• Ways on how emotion affects the way people interact and connect with social media sites
• A look at ways social media encourages lousy behavior
• How are social media use and depression connected?
• Ways that social media can limit creativity
• A look at social media and the perception of social support
• Social media and the formation of social norms
• How does social media impact attention span
• Social media and the perception of time
• How social media impacts social comparison

Leading Neuroscience Anatomy Research Paper Topics

The study of neuroscience anatomy is vital as it educates the connection between the brain and nervous system. Discover leading neuroscience anatomy research paper topics  you can use from this list.

• Discuss the anatomy of the human brain
• Anatomy of the autonomic nervous system
• The anatomy and physiology of Parkinson’s disease.
• The structure and function of neurons in the brain
• The role of the basal ganglia in motor control
• The anatomy of the prefrontal cortex and executive function
• The auditory pathway and its neuroanatomy
• The neuroanatomy of memory formation and storage
• The anatomy and physiology of language processing
• The anatomy and physiology of pain perception
• The neuroanatomy of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders

Are you searching for the best neurobiology topics to use? Consider these social issues research topics for your essay.

• How does social comparison affect self-esteem
• What role does the autonomic nervous system play in emotion regulation
• Does culture impact brain development?
• Ways chronic stress affects the brain
• The neurobiology of addiction
• Genetic and environmental factors that impact social anxiety
• The neural basis of prejudice and discrimination
• A study of the neurobiology of aggression
• Social issues that lead to alcohol and addiction
• A look at brain implants that can control the computer
• Ways that people use to differentiate good from bad
• How does addiction damage relationships

Did you know that both neuropsychology and economics research paper topics investigate the underlying mechanisms of human behavior and decision-making? Here are great neuropsychology research topics.

• What is the study of neuropsychology?
• A look at the neuropsychology of language
• The benefits of studying neuropsychology
• How does traumatic brain injury impact emotional regulation
• neural basis of learning and memory
• Best way to deal with issues of mental health
• The relationship between exercising and cognitive function
• How does meditation help with mental health
• Ways that mindfulness can impact brain function
• Can hormones cause mental illness
• Sensory processing disorders and mental health
• Personality traits in brain function and mental health

Neuropsychological memory research topics explore how biochemical processes influence memory function. Here are great biochemistry topics on neuropsychology.

• Ways to treat a neuropsychiatric disorder
• How do neurotransmitters cause neuropsychiatric disorder
• What is the biochemical basis of depression
• Biochemical mechanism of anxiety and potential treatment
• How does nutrition affect brain biochemistry
• The basic human personality types
• The link between biochemistry and emotion
• Effective ways of dealing with developmental disorders
• How does lucid dreaming help people quit unhealthy habits
• The biochemical basis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• The role of lipids in brain biochemistry
• The role of oxidative stress in neurodegenerative diseases

The above 120 highlighted topics offer ample opportunities for students to explore and expand their knowledge of the brain and its functions. Since neuroscience is a captivating and fast-evolving field of study, seek assistance from the best. You need to write a fascinating topic and paper, and that’s where our writers come in – to write exceptional papers for you to score high grades.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

179+ Interesting Neuroscience Research Topics For Students

Neuroscience is the study of the brain and how it works. It’s like opening a door to a world of wonders, where every discovery sheds light on the inner workings of our minds.

Students are drawn to neuroscience because it helps us understand ourselves better. We want to know what makes us tick, why we behave the way we do, and how we can make a difference in the world through science.

That’s where our blog comes in. We’re here to make neuroscience easy to understand and exciting to explore. 

We’ll share many interesting neuroscience research topics that students can dive into, so come along as we journey through the wonders of the brain together!

Neuroscience: What is it?

Table of Contents

Neuroscience is the study of the brain and nervous system. It delves into understanding how these intricate systems function, from the smallest neurons to complex brain networks. 

By exploring the structure, organization, and functions of the brain, neuroscience seeks to unravel the mysteries of human behavior, cognition, and consciousness. 

Through various methods such as imaging techniques, electrophysiology, and behavioral studies, neuroscientists aim to decipher the underlying mechanisms of neurological disorders, enhance brain health, and ultimately advance our understanding of what it means to be human.

Students Should Understand the Importance of Neuroscience Research Topics

Understanding the importance of neuroscience research topics is crucial for students for several reasons:

Advancing Knowledge

Neuroscience research topics offer students insight into the complexities of the brain and nervous system, fostering a deeper understanding of how these intricate systems shape behavior, cognition, and emotions.

Improving Healthcare

By studying neuroscience, students gain valuable knowledge about the underlying mechanisms of mental health disorders, leading to more effective interventions and destigmatization of mental illness.

Informing Education

Neuroscience research informs teaching practices by elucidating how the brain learns and retains information, guiding educators in creating more effective learning environments and strategies.

Advancing Medical Treatments

Insights gained from neuroscience research contribute to the development of novel treatments for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy, offering hope for improved patient outcomes and quality of life.

Exploring Consciousness

Neuroscience research delves into the nature of consciousness, shedding light on philosophical questions about the mind and subjective experience, enriching interdisciplinary dialogues and intellectual inquiry.

List of Best Student-Friendly Neuroscience Research Topics

Here’s a list of neuroscience research topics that students can explore:

Brain Development and Plasticity

• Neuroplasticity in Aging Brains
• Effects of Early Childhood Experiences on Brain Development
• Role of Neurogenesis in Learning and Memory
• Plasticity in the Visual Cortex
• Environmental Influences on Brain Plasticity
• Effects of Exercise on Brain Plasticity
• Developmental Disorders and Brain Plasticity
• Plasticity and Recovery after Brain Injury
• Epigenetic Regulation of Brain Plasticity
• Neuroplasticity and Language Acquisition
• Music and Brain Plasticity
• Plasticity in Neurorehabilitation

Cognitive Neuroscience

• Neural Mechanisms of Decision-Making
• Attention and Working Memory in the Brain
• Neural Basis of Language Processing
• Executive Function and Prefrontal Cortex Activity
• Neural Correlates of Creativity
• Memory Consolidation and Retrieval Mechanisms
• Neural Basis of Emotion Regulation
• Neural Processing of Time Perception
• Brain Networks Underlying Social Cognition
• Neurobiology of Decision-Making Disorders
• Perception and Neural Representations
• Neural Basis of Consciousness

Neurobiology of Mental Disorders

• Neurobiology of Depression and Anxiety
• Schizophrenia: Insights from Neuroimaging Studies
• Molecular Mechanisms of Bipolar Disorder
• Genetics of Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Neurobiology of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Brain Mechanisms
• Addiction and Reward Circuitry in the Brain
• Neurobiology of Eating Disorders
• Neural Correlates of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Neurobiology of PTSD
• Sleep Disorders and Brain Function
• Neural Basis of Schizoaffective Disorder

Neuropharmacology and Drug Development

• Drug Targets in Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Pharmacological Treatment of Epilepsy
• Psychopharmacology of Mood Disorders
• Novel Therapeutic Approaches for Alzheimer’s Disease
• Pharmacological Interventions for Parkinson’s Disease
• Drug Addiction: Neurobiological Insights
• Neuropharmacology of Pain Management
• Pharmacogenomics in Neuropsychiatric Disorders
• Neurotransmitter Systems and Drug Development
• Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery to the Brain
• Herbal Remedies and Neurological Disorders
• Pharmacological Approaches to Enhance Cognitive Function

Neuroimaging Techniques

• Functional MRI (fMRI) and Brain Connectivity
• Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) in White Matter Tractography
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in Neuroscience Research
• Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Brain Dynamics
• Structural MRI in Brain Morphometry
• Electroencephalography (EEG) in Cognitive Neuroscience
• Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) for Brain Monitoring
• Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) in Neuroimaging Studies
• Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in Brain Imaging
• Resting-State Functional Connectivity Analysis
• Multi-Modal Imaging Approaches in Neuroscience
• Advanced Imaging Techniques in Animal Models

Neurogenetics and Epigenetics

• Genetic Variants Associated with Neurological Disorders
• Epigenetic Regulation of Brain Development
• Gene-Environment Interactions in Brain Function
• Neurogenetics of Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Epigenetic Modifications and Memory Formation
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Genetic Risk Factors
• Role of microRNAs in Neural Regulation
• Epigenetic Mechanisms in Addiction
• Genomic Instability and Brain Tumors
• Neuroepigenetics in Aging
• Neurogenetic Basis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders
• Epigenetic Therapies for Neurological Disorders

Neuroethics and Neurolaw

• Ethical Considerations in Brain-Computer Interfaces
• Privacy and Data Security in Neuroimaging Research
• Neuroenhancement and Cognitive Enhancement Technologies
• Neuroimaging in Legal Decision-Making
• Ethical Implications of Neuropsychiatric Interventions
• Neuroethical Issues in Brain Stimulation Research
• Informed Consent in Neuroscientific Studies
• Ethical Challenges in Neuroimaging of Consciousness
• Neuroethics of Brain-Computer Interface Technology
• Neuroethics and Artificial Intelligence
• Neurolaw and Brain-Based Lie Detection
• Ethical Issues in Neurological Disorders Research

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

• Hippocampal Function in Spatial Memory
• Neurobiological Basis of Fear Conditioning
• Memory Reconsolidation Mechanisms
• Neurobiology of Habit Formation
• Neuroplasticity and Skill Learning
• Synaptic Mechanisms of Memory Encoding
• Molecular Basis of Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)
• Neurobiology of Memory Retrieval
• Aging and Memory Decline
• Neurobiological Processes in Motor Learning
• Emotional Memory Processing in the Brain
• Memory Formation in Sleep and Dreaming

Neuroimmunology

• Role of Microglia in Brain Development and Disease
• Neuroinflammation in Neurological Disorders
• Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction in Neurodegeneration
• Immunomodulatory Therapies for Multiple Sclerosis
• Neuroimmune Interactions in Psychiatric Disorders
• Role of T Cells in Central Nervous System Disorders
• Neuroinflammatory Responses to Traumatic Brain Injury
• Cytokine Signaling in Neurological Diseases
• Gut-Brain Axis and Neuroimmune Communication
• Autoimmune Encephalitis and Neurological Dysfunction
• Immune Cell Trafficking in the Central Nervous System
• Neuroimmune Crosstalk in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Computational Neuroscience

• Neural Network Models of Learning and Memory
• Computational Approaches to Brain Connectivity Analysis
• Spiking Neural Networks for Information Processing
• Machine Learning Applications in Neuroimaging
• Modeling Neural Oscillations and Synchronization
• Reinforcement Learning in Decision-Making Models
• Network Dynamics in Brain Diseases
• Neural Encoding and Decoding Techniques
• Computational Models of Visual Perception
• Brain-Inspired Computing Architectures
• Computational Psychiatry and Mental Health Modeling
• Computational Approaches to Brain-Computer Interfaces

Neuroengineering and Brain-Computer Interfaces

• Development of Neuroprosthetics for Motor Rehabilitation
• Brain-Machine Interface Technologies for Communication
• Neurofeedback Systems for Cognitive Enhancement
• Neurostimulation Techniques for Treating Neuropsychiatric Disorders
• Closed-Loop Systems in Deep Brain Stimulation
• Wearable Devices for Monitoring Brain Activity
• Optogenetics in Controlling Neural Circuits
• Brain-Computer Interface Applications in Virtual Reality
• Neurotechnology for Restoring Sensory Functions
• Neuromorphic Computing and Brain-Inspired Chips
• Brain-Computer Interface Accessibility for Individuals with Disabilities
• Ethical Considerations in Neuroengineering Research

Neurobiology of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

• Brain Regions Involved in Sleep Regulation
• Role of Melatonin in Circadian Rhythms
• Circadian Clock Genes and Brain Health
• Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance
• Neurobiology of Dreaming
• Sleep Architecture and Memory Consolidation
• Effects of Shift Work on Brain Function
• Circadian Rhythms and Metabolic Health
• Brain Plasticity During Sleep
• Sleep Disorders in Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Chronobiology and Mood Disorders

Neurobiology of Sensory Systems

• Auditory Processing in the Brain
• Visual Perception and Neural Processing
• Somatosensory System and Tactile Perception
• Olfactory Processing and Brain Circuits
• Gustatory System and Taste Perception
• Multisensory Integration in the Brain
• Vestibular System and Spatial Orientation
• Pain Perception and Neurobiology
• Neurobiology of Itch Sensation
• Sensory Adaptation Mechanisms in the Brain
• Crossmodal Plasticity in Sensory Deprivation
• Neurobiology of Proprioception

Neurobiology of Motivation and Reward

• Dopaminergic Pathways in Reward Processing
• Neural Basis of Motivated Behavior
• Incentive Salience and Brain Circuits
• Neurobiology of Addiction and Reward Dysfunction
• Role of Serotonin in Mood and Motivation
• Endocannabinoid System and Reward Processing
• Neuronal Mechanisms of Reinforcement Learning
• Hormonal Influences on Motivation and Reward
• Neurobiology of Hedonic Eating Behavior
• Neural Circuits Underlying Social Reward
• Motivational Deficits in Neuropsychiatric Disorders
• Reward Prediction Errors and Learning

Neurobiology of Aging and Neurodegeneration

• Cellular Senescence and Brain Aging
• Oxidative Stress and Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Protein Aggregation in Neurodegeneration
• Neuroinflammation and Age-Related Cognitive Decline
• Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Disorders
• Role of Autophagy in Brain Health and Aging
• Neurotrophic Factors and Brain Aging
• Genetic Risk Factors for Age-Related Neurodegeneration
• Environmental Factors in Brain Aging
• Neuroprotective Strategies for Age-Related Cognitive Impairment
• Lifestyle Interventions for Brain Health and Longevity

How to Choose a Neuroscience Research Topic?

Choosing a neuroscience research topic can be an exciting yet daunting task. Here are some steps to help you navigate the process:

• Identify Your Interests: Start by reflecting on areas of neuroscience that intrigue you the most, such as cognitive neuroscience, neuropharmacology, or neurodevelopment.
• Review Existing Literature: Conduct thorough research to understand current trends, gaps, and unanswered questions within your chosen area.
• Consider Feasibility: Evaluate the resources, equipment, and expertise available to you, ensuring your chosen topic is manageable within your constraints.
• Consult with Mentors: Seek guidance from professors, advisors, or experts in the field to refine your ideas and gain valuable insights.
• Brainstorm Potential Topics: Generate a list of potential research topics based on your interests, literature review, and feedback from mentors.
• Narrow Down Your Choices: Assess each potential topic’s relevance, novelty, and significance to select the most promising one for your research.
• Define Clear Objectives: Clearly articulate the research questions or hypotheses you aim to address with your chosen topic.
• Consider Ethical Implications: Ensure your research topic aligns with ethical standards and regulations governing research involving human or animal subjects.
• Seek Approval: Present your chosen topic to relevant authorities or review boards for approval before proceeding with your research.
• Stay Flexible: Remain open to adjustments and refinements to your research topic as you delve deeper into your study and encounter new insights along the way.

Resources for Students Interested in Neuroscience

For students interested in neuroscience, there are various resources available to enhance their understanding and engagement with the field. Here are some recommended resources:

Academic Journals

Access reputable neuroscience journals like “Neuron” and “Journal of Neuroscience” for cutting-edge research articles.

Online Courses

Platforms like Coursera , edX , and Khan Academy offer free or low-cost courses covering various aspects of neuroscience.

Explore fundamental neuroscience textbooks like “ Principles of Neural Science ” by Kandel et al. or “Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain” by Bear et al.

Research Institutes

Consider internships or volunteer opportunities at neuroscience research institutes or university labs for hands-on experience.

Professional Organizations

Join organizations like the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) for networking opportunities, conferences, and resources.

Neuroscience Websites

Websites like Neuroscience for Kids provide educational resources, activities, and information for students.

Podcasts and Blogs

Listen to neuroscience podcasts or follow neuroscience blogs for accessible explanations and discussions on current topics.

Wrapping Up

Neuroscience research offers students a profound opportunity to delve into the complexities of the brain and nervous system, shaping our understanding of human cognition, behavior, and health. 

As we conclude our exploration, I encourage readers to embrace the excitement of neuroscience, delve deeper into its mysteries, and contribute to the ongoing scientific dialogue.

Let’s remain curious, engaged, and open to the wonders of the brain, for within its intricate pathways lie endless possibilities waiting to be discovered. 

Together, let’s continue our journey of discovery and unraveling the secrets of the mind.

1. What are some career options in neuroscience research?

Diverse pathways exist, including academic research, healthcare, biotechnology, education, and technology development.

2. What are some current challenges and future directions in neuroscience research?

Understanding consciousness, treating brain disorders, developing brain-computer interfaces, and personalized medicine are some exciting areas of exploration.

3. What are some emerging trends or areas of interest in neuroscience research?

Emerging trends in neuroscience research include neurotechnology, brain-machine interfaces, computational neuroscience, and neuroethics.

4. What are some reputable journals and databases for neuroscience research?

Some reputable journals include Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, and Journal of Neuroscience. Databases like PubMed and PsychInfo also provide access to a wealth of neuroscientific literature.

Related Posts

Science Fair Project Ideas For 6th Graders

When it comes to Science Fair Project Ideas For 6th Graders, the possibilities are endless! These projects not only help students develop essential skills, such…

Java Project Ideas for Beginners

Java is one of the most popular programming languages. It is used for many applications, from laptops to data centers, gaming consoles, scientific supercomputers, and…

Browse Course Material

Course info.

• Prof. Peter H. Schiller

Departments

• Brain and Cognitive Sciences

As Taught In

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science

Research Topics in Neuroscience

Course description.

This series of research talks by members of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences introduces students to different approaches to the study of the brain and mind.

Topics include:

• From Neurons to Neural Networks
• Prefrontal Cortex and the Neural Basis of Cognitive Control
• Hippocampal Memory Formation and the …
• Hippocampal Memory Formation and the Role of Sleep
• The Formation of Internal Modes for Learning Motor Skills
• Look and See: How the Brain Selects Objects and Directs the Eyes
• How the Brain Wires Itself

You are leaving MIT OpenCourseWare

Answering the Biggest Neurological Research Questions of Today

• Download PDF Copy
• View Supplier Profile

An interview with Dr. Peggy Taylor (Sc.D.) at SfN 2018, discussing the biggest neurological research questions of today and how BioLegend is helping to develop new biomarkers for neurological disease.

Why is it important to study neurological diseases?

There are so many fundamental biological questions that remain unanswered about the functioning of the brain in health and disease states. That’s why we're developing tools to try to enable people to interrogate pathways and processes to better understand how the brain works.

The impact of diseases on the brain is very vast, from neurodegenerative diseases to psychiatric conditions. It impinges on a wide swathe of society, and the burden on society by these diseases is quite high. I think that neurological diseases are at the level of cancer in terms of the impact that they can have on people's lives.

What are the biggest neurological research questions being asked today?

There are a lot of questions being asked right now, but I think that understanding the biology of synapses, how the brain is wired during development, and how those connections are maintained throughout life are some of the biggest questions.

Misfolded proteins are the hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease, and we still don't really understand why they form, how that happens, and why people are differently able to clear them. That goes right to the next thing, which is the genetics.

There's a lot of GWAS data out there and scientists trying to understand how that impacts certain cellular processes. Scientists are searching for commonalities, and if point mutations in disparate proteins impinge on the same processes.

Neuroimmunology is another area that has emerged in the past few years. The link between aging, pro-inflammatory markers, and neurological disease is one particular area of interest. Researchers want to understand how inflammation impacts the ability of cells to maintain homeostasis and whether there are any protective mechanisms that can be exploited for new treatments.

Over the last five to eight years, the research community has really started to understand that microglia and astrocytes – the resident immune cells of the brain – play a far greater role in neurological disease than previously thought, so there is a lot of biology to be understood here.

People are also beginning to understand that the brain is not immune privileged, as they thought it had been for so many years, and so the role of infiltrating peripheral cells is a hot topic at the moment.

How are biomarkers used in disease diagnosis, and why are new biomarkers needed for neurological diseases?

The traditional definition of a diagnostic biomarker is where you can say, "If you have a reading of X number, that means you have this disease or you don't," but this is only a small sliver of how biomarkers can be used.

Biomarkers can be used to stratify patients in clinical trials using their molecular profile and determine the intervention that is most suitable to them. There are so many different pathways that can result in a similar phenotype, especially in the field of neuroscience, so it's important to understand the underlying cause of the disease and then identify the best course of action.

Progression markers are also very important, not only for monitoring the patient's health but also to understand if a therapy is working.

The reason we need new biomarkers is that there's a lot of crosstalk between neurodegenerative diseases. Traditional biomarkers may be able to distinguish healthy controls from somebody with a neurodegenerative disease, but getting into the specifics of who has which disease is an important part where we need new and better biomarkers.

Imaging biomarkers have seen a rise in the last few years, and certainly being able to image amyloid and tau has greatly impacted the Alzheimer's disease field. The Parkinson's field is moving in that direction as well, where certain imaging technologies will be very impactful.

How is BioLegend involved in Parkinson’s disease research?

As a leader in the life sciences industry, BioLegend is committed to the development of novel tools to enable researchers at the very basic level. A lot of neuroscience research relies on tissue staining, cell-based assays, western blots, and flow cytometry, and so it's our goal to develop innovative and high-quality antibodies that can address those applications across the board in the areas we’ve mentioned, such as protein misfolding and autophagy.

We have a long-standing relationship with the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF), and as part of this, we supported the Parkinson Progression Markers Initiative through our Human α-Synuclein ELISA Kit . We've also done some analysis for the BioFIND Study and the S4 Study.

We're also working with key opinion leaders in the academic sector to develop new tools for some of the high priority targets that the MJFF has identified that we think will advance research for the PD community.

What is the Covance antibody portfolio and why are custom antibodies invaluable for research?

The Covance Antibody portfolio was acquired by BioLegend in 2014. Covance had built up an antibody products portfolio that was targeting areas of cell biology and neuroscience. This started with antibodies from Berkeley Antibody Company, Signet Laboratories, and Sternberger Monoclonals.

Since the acquisition, BioLegend has been making investments to expand the portfolio and try to push the field forward with innovative and high-quality products.

From the standpoint of custom antibodies, our approach is that we try to anticipate the needs of the research community.

Try It For Yourself:

We have a team of scientists who are reading papers, coming out to meetings, watching big developments that are happening, and trying to project what will be needed.

There are always cases where people are going to have a very specific target that they would like to engage using custom antibodies, and we love collaborating with labs to help make that happen.

Where can readers find more information?

Visit the BioLegend website to find out more.

About Dr. Peggy Taylor

Prior to joining BioLegend in 2014, Peggy was the Director of the Antibody Products business at Covance, where she had worked since 2004 leading the efforts of a development team producing and developing antibodies and immunoassays that are sold as research reagents . She has extensive experience in the development and commercialization of research reagents.

Since 2008, Peggy has been working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research to optimize and validate a total alpha-synuclein ELISA. As part of this, her laboratory has performed sample analysis in support of several programs designed to identify improved Parkinson’s disease biomarkers for diagnosis and disease progression (PPMI, BioFind, and S4).

Peggy earned a Doctor of Science degree in cell biology from Harvard University and is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.

Posted in: Drug Discovery & Pharmaceuticals | Molecular & Structural Biology | Tradeshow Talks | Insights from Industry | Cell Biology | Life Sciences News | Histology & Microscopy

Tags: Aging , Alzheimer's Disease , Antibodies , Antibody , Astrocyte , Autophagy , B Cell , Biomarker , Brain , Cancer , Cell , Cell Biology , Cytometry , Diagnostic , Doctor , ELISA , Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) , Flow Cytometry , Genetics , Imaging , Immunoassays , Inflammation , Laboratory , Microglia , Neurodegenerative Disease , Neurodegenerative Diseases , Neuroimmunology , Neurological Disease , Neuron , Neuroscience , pH , Phenotype , Protein , Reagents , Research , T-Cell

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

BioLegend. (2023, March 16). Answering the Biggest Neurological Research Questions of Today. News-Medical. Retrieved on June 15, 2024 from https://www.news-medical.net/news/20181214/Answering-the-Biggest-Neurological-Research-Questions-of-Today.aspx.

BioLegend. "Answering the Biggest Neurological Research Questions of Today". News-Medical . 15 June 2024. <https://www.news-medical.net/news/20181214/Answering-the-Biggest-Neurological-Research-Questions-of-Today.aspx>.

BioLegend. "Answering the Biggest Neurological Research Questions of Today". News-Medical. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20181214/Answering-the-Biggest-Neurological-Research-Questions-of-Today.aspx. (accessed June 15, 2024).

BioLegend. 2023. Answering the Biggest Neurological Research Questions of Today . News-Medical, viewed 15 June 2024, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20181214/Answering-the-Biggest-Neurological-Research-Questions-of-Today.aspx.

Suggested Reading

Cancel reply to comment

• Trending Stories
• Latest Interviews
• Top Life Sciences Articles

Revolutionizing Life Science: An Interview with SCIEX on ASMS, the SCIEX 7500+ System, and AI-Driven Quantitation

Jose Castro-Perez and Chris Lock, SCIEX

In our latest interview, News Medical speaks with SCIEX, a global leader in life science analytical technologies, about their exciting announcements at ASMS, the SCIEX 7500+ System, and how they utilize AI quantitation software to streamline solutions.

From Discovery Biology to ELRIG Chair

Melanie Leveridge

In this interview, we speak with Melanie Leveridge, Vice President of Discovery Biology at AstraZeneca and Chair of the Board for ELRIG UK, to discuss her extensive career in the pharmaceutical industry, her role in fostering scientific innovation, and her vision for ELRIG's future.

Breathing New Life into Diagnostics: Plasmion's SICRIT Technology

Revolutionizing Non-Invasive Diagnostics with Plasmion’s SICRIT Breath Analysis.

Latest Life Science News

Newsletters you may be interested in

Your AI Powered Scientific Assistant

Hi, I'm Azthena, you can trust me to find commercial scientific answers from News-Medical.net.

A few things you need to know before we start. Please read and accept to continue.

• Use of “Azthena” is subject to the terms and conditions of use as set out by OpenAI .
• Content provided on any AZoNetwork sites are subject to the site Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .
• Large Language Models can make mistakes. Consider checking important information.

Great. Ask your question.

Azthena may occasionally provide inaccurate responses. Read the full terms .

While we only use edited and approved content for Azthena answers, it may on occasions provide incorrect responses. Please confirm any data provided with the related suppliers or authors. We do not provide medical advice, if you search for medical information you must always consult a medical professional before acting on any information provided.

Your questions, but not your email details will be shared with OpenAI and retained for 30 days in accordance with their privacy principles.

Please do not ask questions that use sensitive or confidential information.

Read the full Terms & Conditions .

Provide Feedback

Neuro research: questions, ideas, and motivations

This post summarizes my independent readings and research into psychology and neuroscience.

My initial interest in the mind #

In the past few years I’ve embarked on a lifelong quest to understand the mind and brain. Starting in the pandemic, I spent the evenings after my day job reading textbooks and papers, and writing the occasional blog post (I wrote this overview of my learnings from reading Bear et al’s Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain ). At the beginning of this year, I left my job and started focusing on these studies full-time, trying to narrow my research on a few specific research questions.

My interest in the mind was initially piqued by the problem of consciousness. How does nonsentient matter give rise to conscious experience? In the tradition of Nagel’s What is it like to be a bat? , I think any theory of consciousness must account for the subjective, qualitative nature of conscious experience, and it’s hard to imagine how a theory that explains the world in purely objective terms could do so. I agree with David Chalmers that there really is a “hard” problem of consciousness, which might require a revision of our traditional reductionist/materialist metaphysics. 1 I wrote an accessible explainer a few years ago on the problem of consciousness, as well as some technical notes on consciousness on my blog: solving the hard problem with metaphysics , and notes on Morsella et al’s 2015 paper on passive frame theory .

Given that I think consciousness is, as posed above, a hard problem—potentially even a strictly philosophical problem—I didn’t want to restrict my studies to just that question, given that there are so many other interesting (and important) problems to solve in neuroscience and psychology. This is what led me to the current focus of my research, which is about understanding how the brain heals from psychological problems , specifically in the context of psychotherapy. For the past few months I’ve been more narrowly focused on this question, and I wrote my initial thoughts on it in an appendix to a recent blog post.

Current focus: memory reconsolidation #

I began with Lane et al’s 2015 overview paper on memory resonsolidation . I was interested in this paper for a few reasons:

• I was curious to get a general sense of the current open questions in neuroscience and psychotherapy;
• I’m especially excited about bridging ideas across the disciplines of psychology, psychotherapy, neuroscience, and Eastern contemplative practices;
• I’m intrigued by the promise of memory reconsolidation as a unifying framework for understanding therapeutic change;
• I wanted to use the commentaries as an opportunity to see how researchers from different disciplines would approach the question and to find the current sources of disagreement.

I list some of my questions and notes below. As I’ve gone further into these readings, I’ve identified a number of research areas I’d like to get more background on, specifically in the study of memory.

• Ecker and Vaz 2022 summarize the research on this as such: randomized controlled trials show that therapy is moderately effective, and that the variance in effectiveness is high, with some proportion of patients receiving no benefit. Also, the variance in effectiveness is not accounted for by varying modalities, or by therapist traits such as age, gender, years of experience and so on. Anecdotally however, there are many examples of profound and lasting change in patients, and this kind of change is what Ecker and his colleagues are trying to understand and increase through their work on Coherence Therapy.
• From my reading of the Lane et al’s 2015 paper, the commentaries, and much of Ecker et al’s research, I’m convinced that at a coarse level, thinking about therapy in terms of updating previous memories is the correct paradigm, but that there’s still progress to be made in making our model of therapeutic change more precise, especially in the context of complex emotional learnings in real human life that therapists encounter, as opposed to the more straightforward association memories that we’ve done experimental research on. I list some of these questions below.
• From my readings of introductory neuroscience textbooks I have some rough intuitions (e.g. that the hippocampus is involved in consolidation of memories; that Hebbian theory can explain how patterns of neural activation lead to changes in wiring that ultimately constitute memory formation; and so on) but the concrete details still seem fuzzy to me. I’d next like to read Han et al’s 2021 paper on The Essence of the Engram and also Gallistel’s research on information storage in molecules within the neuron.
• What happens when an implicit mental model (in the sense described by Ecker ) goes from subconscious to conscious and explicitly verbalized? To what extent is verbalization of implicit memory structures necessary for activating those structures and subsequently reconsolidating them?
• What is our molecular picture of what happens in memory (re)consolidation? My current mental model is very simplistic (“inhibiting synthesis of X protein blocks memory (re)consolidation”) and I’d like to get a more detail picture of the causal mechanism.
• Barsalou’s claims  that semantic memory is “embedded within a network of autobiographical memories”
• From the same paper, I’m interested in exploring Dalla Barba et al’s claim that what we call “semantic memory” is related to memories that are stable and overlearned, whereas episodic memories are more malleable.
• I wrote more general notes on my understanding of neuroscience as a whole in Current understanding of neuroscience and Are lesions a good proxy for brain function? .
• I also wrote some speculations in this post on what a “robust, unified” theory of the mind might look lie.

I’m also open to Anil Seth’s claim, however, that a deepening understanding of the physical properties of the brain might eventually give us a clear explanation of consciousness instead, without any metaphysical upheavals. He argues that the problem of consciousness will become much like the question of “how does life arise from nonliving matter”—a question which gradually dissolved given a sufficiently detailed understanding of cells, molecular biology, and genetics.  ↩︎

– These articles focus mainly on neurology research. – What is neurology? – Definition of neurology: a science involved in the study of the nervous systems, especially of the diseases and disorders affecting them. – Neurology research can include information involving brain research, neurological disorders, medicine, brain cancer, peripheral nervous systems, central nervous systems, nerve damage, brain tumors, seizures, neurosurgery, electrophysiology, BMI, brain injuries, paralysis and spinal cord treatments.

FUS Protein Linked to FTD and ALS Spread

New Insights into Pediatric Brain Tumors

World’s First Robotic DBS Surgery in Child Boosts Motor Function

Vascular Risks Linked to Brain Health and Cognitive Decline

Low-Birth-Weight Infants Linked to Later Cognitive Decline

New Target for Spinal Cord Injury Treatment Identified

FDA Panel Backs Donanemab: New Hope for Early Alzheimer’s Treatment

Pruning Pain: Protein Associated with Pain Sensitivity Identified

Loss of Smell Linked to Heart Failure Risk

Evening Exercise Lowers Blood Sugar in Overweight Adults

Viagra Shows Promise in Boosting Brain Blood Flow for Dementia Prevention

Epstein-Barr Virus Plays Critical Role in Multiple Sclerosis

AI Tool Blends Programming and Language for Better Problem Solving

Facial Expressions Key to Strong Social Bonds

Vitamin B6 Boost Method Offers Hope for Brain Health

Custom Essay, Term Paper & Research paper writing services

• testimonials

Toll Free: +1 (888) 354-4744

Email: [email protected]

Writing custom essays & research papers since 2008

100 neuroscience topics for you to use.

If you are reading this, it means you need the best neuroscience topics you could possibly find. After all, the outcome of your research paper depends greatly on the topic you choose.

The more interesting the topic, the better the grade. In addition, we can assure you that your professor will most likely award you some bonus points if you manage to find unique, interesting neuroscience topics. Remember that you should do your best to choose neuroscience research topics that none of your classmates have thought about. This is why our list of ideas is your absolute best option.

Getting the Best Neuroscience Topics

Writing the best neuroscience research papers has never been easier. You should just visit this blog post whenever you need a good topic. Our experienced academic writers are updating the list of ideas periodically to help as many students as possible. There is a very high chance to find some unique topics here with every visit. And remember, all these topics are provided for free. Use them as they are or reword them as you see fit. If you study neuroscience, we are your best option for interesting topics.

Easy Topics in Neuroscience

We will start our list with some easy topics that you can write about without spending too much time on your paper. Check out these easy topics in neuroscience:

• What is behavioral neuroscience?
• Define sensory neuroscience
• What triggers ADHD?
• The study of neuropsychology
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Neurological problems caused by gut bacteria
• Discuss cellular neuroscience

Interesting Neuroscience Topics

If you are looking for some of the most interesting neuroscience topics, you will be thrilled to learn that we have plenty of them right here:

• Link between clean air and amygdala health
• Psychological problems with high IQ people
• Anxiety caused by gut bacteria
• Main causes of schizophrenia
• Alzheimer’s patients’ behavior
• The seat of human consciousness
• How breathing affects our memories

Neuroscience Topics for Research Paper

Writing a research paper doesn’t have to be too difficult. It’s all about the topic. To help you out, our ENL writers have put together a list of excellent neuroscience topics for research paper:

• Research learning and memory
• How does the brain perceive other people?
• Sugar’s effect on our brain
• Neurons can appear even in adulthood
• Discovering a new type of brain cell
• Emotions and their effect on the human mind

Behavioral Neuroscience Topics

Are you interested in researching the subject of behavioral neuroscience? It’s a great idea and it works great in 2023. Here are some interesting behavioral neuroscience topics:

• Enhancing the brain through electrical stimulation
• Discuss optogenetic excitation
• The role of the Synthetic Ligand Injection
• Stimulating the brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation
• Research QTL mapping processes
• Discuss gene engineering

Neuroscience Paper Topics for College Students

Of course, we have more than enough topics for college. Take a look at our neuroscience paper topics for college students and pick the one you like:

• Neuroscience and development
• The role of hormones for the nervous system
• The science of smell
• What causes addiction?
• Neuroplasticity in teaching
• The effects of Parkinson’s on the brain

Hot Topics in Neuroscience

Do you want to write about the latest, hottest topics in neuroscience? If so, you should definitely pick one of these hot topics in neuroscience:

• Why are some people geniuses?
• The damage caused by drug addiction on the brain
• What makes a person insane?
• Managing the effects of Alzheimer
• Discuss the Fragile X syndrome
• Does aging really cause memory loss?

Cool Neuroscience Topics

When you need some cool neuroscience topics, you should visit our blog. We are adding new topics on a weekly basis, so you will surely be able to find some excellent ideas:

• Depression is much more than a mental issue
• A virus may cause Alzheimer’s
• What causes the Chronic Fatigue syndrome?
• The effects of cannabis on the brain
• What is cognitive offloading?
• The basic human personality types

Controversial Topics in Neuroscience

Why wouldn’t you write about controversial topics? In fact, we will help you out. Take a look at these controversial topics in neuroscience and choose the one you like the most:

• Electro stimulation of the brain
• The effects of head impacts in football
• The benefits of marijuana for the brain
• Fish oil for baby brain development
• Curing degenerative diseases: possible?
• Supplements for brain health

Cognitive Neuroscience Topics

We have more than enough cognitive neuroscience topics for you to choose from, so why don’t you pick one right now? They’re all free to use.

• What happens when you hallucinate?
• Effects of opioids on the brain
• Research autism
• Can we erase bad memories?
• LSD’s effect on language
• Cognitive disorders explained

Difficult Topics for Neuroscience Papers

Do you want to test your limits? Or perhaps you want to impress your professor. You could simply pick one of these difficult topics for neuroscience papers and start writing:

• Compare three neurotransmitter abnormalities
• How does the axon handle the action potential?
• Research the path neural signals take in specific situations
• Are emotions a biological thing?
• Dealing with development disorders
• Discuss the neuropsychology of language

Behavioral Neuroscience Research Topics

Behavioral neuroscience is a very interesting thing to research and write about. Check out these behavioral neuroscience research topics:

• Design a behavioral neuroscience study
• Most important behavioral neuroscience studies in 2023
• The importance of REM sleep
• Brain-imaging technologies
• How does behavior affect the nervous system?
• Exercises that help decision making

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Topics

We have a lot of cognitive neuroscience research topics that you can choose from. Give it a try:

• Sign language from a neural point of view
• Research implicit memory
• Language and the cerebellum
• Working memory: humans vs. chimps
• Analyze the prefrontal cortex
• Neural networks and neurons

Interesting Topics in Neuroscience for High School

Of course, we also have easier topics for high school students. These are the most interesting topics in neuroscience for high school:

• The role of sleep for our brain
• What is a degenerative brain disorder?
• Our self-wiring brain
• Are brain implants coming in 2023?
• Discuss the functional organization of memory
• Discuss ways to eliminate learned fears
• The role of dopamine in the brain

Current Topics in Neuroscience

If you want to write about the latest developments in neuroscience, you should definitely pick one of these current topics in neuroscience:

• Curing Alzheimer’s disease
• Best Parkinson’s remedies in 2023
• How effective are supplements for brain health?
• Discuss auditory perceptual learning
• Analyse the timing and source of brain activity
• Loneliness effects on the brain

Best Neuroscience Research Ideas

Below, you will find a list of what we consider to be the absolute best neuroscience research ideas. Pick one now:

• Internet searches and the human memory
• Marijuana use and brain damage
• Electrical implants and associated risks
• An emotional study of the human brain
• Research the causes of depression
• How do humans recognize family members?

The Study of Neuroscience in 2023

Would you like to discuss the field of neuroscience in 2023? We have plenty of topics that should thrill your professor:

• Current topics in neuroscience
• Latest breakthroughs in neuroscience
• Learning capabilities of single cells
• The power of stem cells
• Motherhood: the neuroscience behind it
• The causes of COVID-19 seizures
• Virtual reality games and their effects on memory

Do You Need Some Help?

In case you need even more neuroscience topics, our seasoned academic writers are at your disposal. We will create a brand new, 100% original list of topics just for you in no time. In addition, we can help you with writing the paper. Why waste your time struggling with that difficult essay when our writers can get it done for you in mere hours? Rest assured that you will get a top grade on your paper because all our writers and PhD experts with extensive academic writing experience. Let’s get in touch!

• Português Br
• Journalist Pass

8 innovations in neuroscience and brain research at Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic Staff

Share this:

The brain is a critical, complex organ and intricate diseases affect it. Mayo Clinic researchers are leading discoveries into many conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia , as well as how the brain fundamentally works. Eight research advancements led by neuroscience experts include:

Researchers discover new molecular drug targets for progressive neurological disorder

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is an uncurable brain disorder marked by walking and balance difficulties. Its symptoms mimic Parkinson's disease and dementia. Mayo researchers and collaborators have outlined new therapeutic targets that may lead to future treatments for PSP as well as Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.

"This research enhances our understanding of progressive supranuclear palsy and other related, incurable neurological disorders," says the study's senior author,  Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D.,  a Mayo Clinic neurologist and neuroscientist. "Moving forward, we can target these specific genes or others that are biologically related to them to develop a potential treatment for this untreatable disease."

Mapping cell behaviors in high-grade glioma to improve treatment

High-grade gliomas are cancerous tumors that spread quickly in the brain or spinal cord. Mayo Clinic researchers found invasive brain tumor margins of high-grade  glioma contain biologically distinct genetic and molecular alterations that indicate aggressive behavior and disease recurrence. They also found that MRI techniques, such as  dynamic susceptibility contrast  and diffusion tensor imaging, can help distinguish between the genetic and molecular alterations of invasive tumors, which is important for clinically characterizing areas that are difficult to surgically biopsy.

"We need to understand what is driving tumor progression," says lead author Leland Hu, M.D. , a neuroradiologist at Mayo Clinic. "Our results demonstrate an expanded role of advanced MRI for clinical decision-making for high-grade glioma."

Researchers identify new criteria to detect rapidly progressive dementia

Rapidly progressive dementia (RPD) is caused by several disorders that quickly impair intellectual functioning and interfere with normal activities and relationships. If patients' symptoms appear suddenly causing rapid decline, a physician may diagnose RPD. These patients can progress from initial symptoms of  dementia  to complete incapacitation, requiring full-time care, in less than two years. Mayo Clinic researchers have identified new scoring criteria allowing for the detection of treatable forms of RPD with reasonably high confidence during a patient's first clinical visit. This scoring criteria may allow physicians to substantially reduce the time it takes to begin treatment. 

"Many conditions that cause rapidly progressive dementia can be treated and even reversed. We found that more than half of the patients in our study with rapidly progressive dementia had a treatable underlying condition. We may be able to identify many of these patients early in the symptomatic course by intentionally searching for key clinical symptoms and exam findings and integrating these with results of a brain MRI and spinal tap," says the study's senior author,  Gregg Day, M.D. , a clinical researcher at Mayo Clinic.

Global consortium to study Pick’s disease, rare form of early-onset dementia

Pick's disease , a neurodegenerative disease of unknown genetic origin, is a rare type of  frontotemporal dementia  that affects people under the age of 65. The condition causes changes in personality, behavior and sometimes language impairment. In patients with the disease, tau proteins build up and form abnormal clumps called Pick bodies, which restrict nutrients to the brain and cause neurodegeneration. Researchers at Mayo Clinic and collaborators worldwide have established the Pick's Disease International Consortium to study a specific MAPT gene variation known as MAPT H2 that makes the tau protein and acts as a driver of disease. They investigated a connection between the gene and disease risk, age at onset and duration of Pick's disease.  "We found that the MAPT H2 genetic variant is associated with an increased risk of Pick's disease in people of European descent," says  Owen Ross, Ph.D. , a Mayo Clinic neuroscientist and senior author of the paper. "We were only able to determine that because of the global consortium, which greatly increased the sample size of pathology cases to study Pick's disease."

Moments of clarity in the fog of dementia

Researchers define lucid episodes as unexpected, spontaneous, meaningful and relevant communication from a person who is assumed to have permanently lost the capacity for coherent interactions, either verbally or through gestures and actions. A study surveyed family caregivers of people living with dementia and asked them about witnessing lucid episodes. 

"We have found in our research and stories from caregivers that these kinds of episodes change how they interact with and support their loved ones — usually for the better," says lead author  Joan Griffin, Ph.D. "These episodes can serve as reminders that caregiving is challenging, but we can always try to care with a little more humanity and grace."

Untangling the threads of early-onset dementia

Changes in personality, behavior and language are hallmarks of  frontotemporal dementia (FTD) , the most common form of dementia in patients under the age of 65. New research provides insight into the role a specific gene and the protein it produces play in the development and progression of FTD, which is associated with degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The researchers think the key may lie in the formation of fibrils, or tiny fiber-like structures produced by part of this protein, that sometimes get tangled up in the brain.

"We also think that these fibrils could one day serve as biomarkers to help clinicians determine FTD prognosis or severity, " says Jordan Marks, an M.D.–Ph.D. student with the  Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences .

Mayo Clinic researchers' new tool links Alzheimer's disease types to rate of cognitive decline

Through a new corticolimbic index tool that identifies changes in specific areas of the brain, Mayo Clinic researchers discovered a series of brain changes characterized by unique clinical features and immune cell behaviors for Alzheimer's disease , a leading cause of dementia .

"By combining our expertise in the fields of neuropathology, biostatistics, neuroscience, neuroimaging and neurology to address Alzheimer's disease from all angles, we've made significant strides in understanding how it affects the brain," says  Melissa E. Murray, Ph.D. , a translational neuropathologist at Mayo Clinic. "The corticolimbic index is a score that could encourage a paradigm shift toward understanding the individuality of this complex disease and broaden our perspective. This study marks a significant step toward personalized care, offering hope for more effective future therapies."

New research platform assesses brain cancer mutations during surgery

Brain cancer is difficult to treat when it starts growing, and a prevalent type, known as a glioma , has a poor five-year survival rate. Mayo Clinic researchers report on a new surgical platform used during surgery that informs critical decision-making about tumor treatment within minutes. Time is of the utmost importance when dealing with aggressive malignant tumors.

The researchers say that, in addition to enabling real-time diagnosis, the platform allows surgeons to determine a patient's prognosis and perform tumor resection to improve patient outcomes.

“We will be able to bring the fight against cancer to the operating room, before chemotherapy and radiation treatments begin, and before the disease has progressed and invaded further," says the study's senior author, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, M.D.

• Comprehensive testing leads to targeted treatment for rare autoimmune encephalitis antibody Mayo Clinic Minute: Types of brain tumors and treatments

Related Articles

Learning, Memory & Plasticity

Neuroscientists are making rapid progress in understanding the mechanisms by which people learn and remember, by studying how experience modifies brain circuits, and by understanding the organization of large-scale brain networks that support the ability to recollect past events. 

Questions we are exploring include:

• Why do we remember some events and forget others?
• How do we keep information in mind without getting distracted?
• What are the brain changes that put someone at risk for Alzheimer's Disease?
• How can we develop better approaches to education based on our understanding of the brain?
• How can we diagnose and treat people who have memory problems?
• How is memory and brain function affected by stress or trauma?
• How does memory change over the course of development from childhood to old age?

Faculty studying learning and memory

• William DeBello, PhD
• Diasynou Fioravante, PhD
• Mark Goldman, PhD
• John Gray, MD, PhD
• Tim Hanks, PhD
• Kimberley McAllister, PhD
• Alex Nord, PhD
• Charan Ranganath, PhD
• Gregg Recanzone, PhD
• Mitchell Sutter, PhD
• W. Martin Usrey, PhD
• Jennifer Whistler, PhD
• Brian Wiltgen, PhD
• Andrew Yonelinas, PhD
• Karen Zito, PhD
• David Amaral, PhD 
• Erie Boorman, PhD
• Stacey Combes, PhD  
• Charles DeCarli, MD
• Megan Dennis, PhD
• Catherine Fassbender, PhD
• Melanie Gareau, PhD
• Simona Ghetti, PhD
• Cecilia Giulivi, PhD
• Gene Gurkoff, PhD
• Amanda Guyer, PhD
• Randi Hagerman, MD
• Johannes Hell, PhD
• Petr Janata, PhD
• Wilsaan Joiner, PhD
• Janine LaSalle, PhD
• Steven Luck, PhD
• Peter Mundy, PhD
• Karl Murray, PhD
• Kwan Ng, MD, PhD
• Christine Wu Nordahl, PhD
• David Olson, PhD
• Dan Ragland, PhD
• Julie Schweitzer, PhD
• David Segal, PhD
• Kiarash Shahlaie, MD, PhD
• Julia Devi Sharma, M.D., F.R.C.S.C, F.A.A.N.S.
• Sergi Simo, PhD
• Tamara Swaab, PhD
• Diane Swick, PhD
• Brian Trainor, PhD
• Jie (JZ) Zheng, PhD

Microscopy Techniques for Neuroscience

Download your copy of the wiley ebook here.

• Super Resolution Microscopy

Light Sheet Microscopy

• Life Sciences
• X-Ray Microscopy
• FIB-SEM Crossbeam

In this new 48-page WILEY ebook, get an overview of how microscopy can be applied in neuroscience research. Download the ebook below and read about:

Key Learnings:

• Microscopy techniques & their benefits for neuroscience research
• Microscopy-enabled accomplishments in neuroscience research (8 short versions of selected peer-reviewed articles from various WILEY journals)
• Current challenges & future developments in microscopy applications for neuroscience (Interview with Prof. Misgeld from the Munich Center for Neuroscience)

Register for full access

To microscopy insights hub.

• Learn about microscopy topics for your field of application
• Regularly updated with new articles & videos
• One registration for all existing & future content

Take a Look Inside

Related Articles

A Pseudo-4D Study of Embryonic Skeletal Development in the Domestic Chicken, and New Insights into the 3D Structure of the Avian Eggshell Membrane

Revolutionize Your Imaging of Soft Tissue Structure

Related products.

ZEISS Atlas 5 – Master Your Multi-scale Challenge

Solution for automated image acquisition, data correlation and multi-modal 2D & 3D workflows.

ZEISS Celldiscoverer 7

High-quality data acquisition made easy – adaptable automation for advanced workflows.

ZEISS Crossbeam

FIB-SEMs for 3D analysis and sample preparation, imaging & analytical performance, ion beam milling & tomography.

ZEISS Elyra 7 with Lattice SIM​

Your live imaging system with unprecedented resolution down to molecular details​

ZEISS LSM 980 with Airyscan 2

4D super-resolution imaging and simultaneous spectral detection of multiple weak labels up to 900 nm emission.

ZEISS Lightsheet 7​

Light sheet microscope for 3D imaging of whole living model organisms and cleared specimens

ZEISS MultiSEM: The World’s Fastest Scanning Electron Microscope

Image samples in the centimeter scale at nanometer resolution – with the acquisition speed of 91 parallel electron beams.

ZEISS Xradia Versa XRM

Expand the boundaries of your non-destructive sub-micron scale imaging built on industry-best resolution and contrast.

Contact for Insights Hub

Further questions.

Please feel free to contact our experts.

Form is loading...

Your form is being submitted...

• Your file(s) couldn't be submitted. Please abort to return to the form.

If you want to have more information on data processing at ZEISS please refer to our data privacy notice .

• See us on facebook
• See us on twitter
• See us on youtube
• See us on linkedin
• See us on instagram

Myelination in the brain may be key to ‘learning’ opioid addiction

New research in mice by Stanford Medicine scientists has found that the process of adaptive myelination, which helps the brain learn new skills, can also promote addiction to opioids.

June 5, 2024 - By Nina Bai

Stanford Medicine research has found that adaptive myelination, the neuronal process by which we improve our skills, can lead to morphine addiction in mice.  Sherry Young and Alex Mit - stock.adobe.com

Our brains, even in adulthood, continually adapt to what we do, strengthening or weakening neural pathways as we practice new skills or abandon old habits. Now, research by Stanford Medicine scientists has found that a particular type of neuroplasticity, known as adaptive myelination, can also contribute to drug addiction.

In adaptive myelination, more active brain circuits gain more myelin — the fatty insulation that allows electrical signals to travel faster and more efficiently through nerve fibers. Learning to juggle or practicing the piano, for example, gradually increases myelination in the brain circuits involved, optimizing for these abilities.

But the same adaptive myelination that is essential to learning, attention and memory has a dark side. In the new study in mice, researchers found that a single dose of morphine was enough to trigger the steps leading to myelination of dopamine-producing neurons — part of the brain’s reward circuitry — spurring the mice to seek out more of the drug. When myelination was blocked, the mice made no effort to find more morphine.

The new findings , published June 5 in  Nature , show how using addictive drugs can drive maladaptive myelination of the brain’s reward circuitry, which in turn reinforces drug-seeking behavior.

Myelin matters

“Myelin development does not complete until we’re in our late 20s or early 30s, which is kind of fascinating,” said  Michelle Monje , MD, PhD, the Milan Gambhir Professor in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology and senior author of the study.

Even after such a protracted developmental period, special cells in the brain called oligodendrocytes continue to generate new myelin in some brain regions.

“What we’ve come to understand over the last decade or so is that myelin, in some parts of the nervous system, is actually plastic and adaptable to experience,” Monje said. “The activity of a neuron can regulate the extent to which its axon is myelinated.”

Michelle Monje

Research in neuroplasticity has mostly focused on changes that occur at synapses — where neurons meet and communicate with each other. Adaptive myelination adds a new layer to how our brains learn from experience.

Much of the foundational knowledge about adaptive myelination has come from Monje’s lab. In 2014, her team reported that stimulating the premotor cortex of mice increased the myelination of neurons there and improved limb movement. Subsequent studies by her lab and collaborators have found that mice need adaptive myelination for spatial learning — to navigate a maze, for example, or to remember a threatening situation.

Reward learning

In the new study, Monje’s team wondered whether adaptive myelination was involved in reward learning. The researchers generated a rewarding experience in mice by giving them cocaine or morphine, or by directly stimulating their dopamine-producing neurons using optogenetic techniques.

Within three hours of a single injection of cocaine or morphine or 30 minutes of stimulation, the researchers were surprised to see a proliferation of the specialized stem cells that are destined to become myelin-producing oligodendrocytes. The proliferation was isolated to a brain region known as the ventral tegmental area, which is involved in reward learning and addiction.

“We didn’t think one dose of morphine or cocaine would do anything,” said  Belgin Yalcin , PhD, lead author of the new study and an instructor in neurology and neurological sciences. “But within three hours there was a change. A very mild change, but still a change.”

Both the speed and specificity of the changes were unexpected, the researchers said.

When researchers repeated the drug injections or brain stimulation for several days, then examined the mice a month later, they indeed found more oligodendrocytes and more myelinated dopamine-producing cells, with thicker myelin around their axons, again only in the ventral tegmental area.

Even a slight thickening of myelin — in this case, by several hundred nanometers — can affect brain function and behavior.

“Details matter in terms of myelin plasticity,” Yalcin said. “So little can make such a big difference in conduction velocity and the synchronicity of the circuit.”

Potent rewards

To see how the myelination translated into behavior, the researchers placed each mouse in a box where it could move freely between two chambers. In one chamber, the mice received a daily injection of morphine. (The researchers decided to focus on morphine because of its relevance to the opioid epidemic.) After five days, the mice strongly preferred the chamber where they had received the drug and would linger there, hoping for another hit.

Belgin Yalcin

The morphine stimulated the mice’s reward circuitry (specifically, the dopamine-producing neurons in the ventral tegmental area), increased the myelination of these neurons and tuned their brains for further reward-seeking behavior.

Curiously, when the researchers tested a food reward instead of morphine, the mice did not develop more food-seeking behavior, perhaps because the reward was less potent, the researchers said.

“You might not want your reward circuits to be modified by everyday kinds of rewards,” Monje said.

From mice to men

“In the healthy nervous system, adaptive myelination tunes circuit dynamics in a way that supports healthy cognitive functions like learning, memory and attention,” Monje said.

But as the new study demonstrates, the process can go awry, enhancing circuits that drive unhealthy behaviors or failing to enhance circuits required for healthy brain function.

In 2022, Monje’s lab reported that adaptive myelination could explain why some epileptic seizures  worsen  over time. The experience of seizures drives more myelination of the circuits involved, allowing faster and more synchronized signaling, which become more frequent and severe seizures. Her team also has found that reduced myelin plasticity  contributes  to “chemo-fog,” the cognitive impairments that often follow cancer treatment.

In the new study, the precise biochemical steps by which a drug reward leads to myelination are not completely clear. The researchers tried bathing oligodendrocyte precursor cells in dishes of morphine or dopamine and determined that neither chemical directly causes proliferation of these cells.

“A future direction would be to understand what exactly these myelin-forming cells are responding to that comes from the activity of dopaminergic neurons,” Yalcin said.

They found that a pathway known as BDNF-TrkB signaling is part of the story. When they blocked this pathway, the mice did not generate new oligodendrocytes and did not acquire a preference for the chamber where they received the drug. 

“The mice just couldn’t learn where they received their morphine reward,” Monje said.

Ultimately, a better understanding of adaptive myelination might reveal new strategies to help people recover from opioid addiction. Perhaps the process can be reversed and an addiction unlearned.

“We don’t know whether these changes are permanent, but there’s reason to believe that they would not be,” Monje said. “We think that myelin plasticity is bidirectional — you can both increase myelination of a circuit and decrease myelination of a circuit.”

The study was supported by funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute NeuroChoice Initiative, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (grant R01NS092597), the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (DP1NS111132), the National Institute for Drug Abuse (P50DA042012, T32DA035165 and K99DA056573), the National Cancer Institute (P50CA165962, R01CA258384 and U19CA264504), the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, Cancer Grand Challenges and Cancer Research UK, a Maternal and Child Health Research Institute at Stanford University Postdoctoral Award, and a Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Hope amid crisis

Psychiatry’s new frontiers

• Advanced search

Advanced Search

• A comparison of rapid rule-learning strategies in humans and monkeys
• Find this author on Google Scholar
• Find this author on PubMed
• Search for this author on this site
• Info & Metrics

Inter-species comparisons are key to deriving an understanding of the behavioral and neural correlates of human cognition from animal models. We perform a detailed comparison of the strategies of female macaque monkeys to male and female humans on a variant of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST), a widely studied and applied task that provides a multi-attribute measure of cognitive function and depends on the frontal lobe. WCST performance requires the inference of a rule change given ambiguous feedback. We found that well-trained monkeys infer new rules three times more slowly than minimally instructed humans. Input-dependent Hidden Markov Model-Generalized Linear Models were fit to their choices, revealing hidden states akin to feature-based attention in both species. Decision processes resembled a Win-Stay Lose-Shift strategy with inter-species similarities as well as key differences. Monkeys and humans both test multiple rule hypotheses over a series of rule-search trials and perform inference-like computations to exclude candidate choice options. We quantitatively show that perseveration, random exploration and poor sensitivity to negative feedback account for the slower task-switching performance in monkeys.

Significance Statement Advances in training and recording from animal models support the study of increasingly complex behaviors in non-humans. Before interpreting their neural computations as human-like, we must first ascertain whether their computational algorithms are human-like. We compared rapid rule-learning strategies of macaque monkeys and humans on a Wisconsin Card Sorting Test variant and found that monkeys are 3-4 times slower than humans at learning new rules. Model fits to choice behavior revealed that both species use qualitatively similar exploration strategies with different decision criteria. These differences produced distinct errors in monkeys that are similar to those observed in humans with prefrontal deficits. Our results generate detailed neural hypotheses and highlight the need for systematic inter-species behavioral and neural comparisons.

We thank S. Ahmad, N. Germanos, M. Jutras, K. Morrisroe, C.I. O’Leary, and S. Schleufer for their roles in animal care and training. We also thank S.W. Linderman for generously sharing his code and advice on fitting HMM-GLM models to data; and I.R. Stone, J. Ferre and E.Y. Walker for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by the National Institute of Health U-19 program grant no. 5U19NS107609-03, R01 grant no. R01MH062349, the Office of Naval Research grant no. N00014-17-1-2041 (to XJW), and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research Infrastructure Programs under award number P51OD010425 (to EAB).

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

↵ * equal contribution

SfN exclusive license .

Member Log In

Log in using your username and password, purchase access.

Thank you for sharing this Journal of Neuroscience article.

NOTE: We request your email address only to inform the recipient that it was you who recommended this article, and that it is not junk mail. We do not retain these email addresses.

Citation Manager Formats

• EndNote (tagged)
• EndNote 8 (xml)
• RefWorks Tagged
• Ref Manager

• Tweet Widget
• Facebook Like
• Google Plus One

Jump to section

Responses to this article, jump to comment:, related articles, cited by..., more in this toc section, research articles.

• The consolidation of newly learned movements depends upon somatosensory cortex in humans
• Neural activity differentiates novel and learned event boundaries

Behavioral/Cognitive

Artificial Intelligence

Ai enables virtual behavioral neuroscience, realistic ai rodents may accelerate psychobiology, robotics, biotech, and pharma..

Posted June 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• AI can be used to create realistic virtual animals.
• The virtual rodents can help us understand how real ones move.
• This new technique could accelerate progress in both artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

Understanding the underlying biological mechanisms of human and animal behavior can help advance critically important industries such as medicine, healthcare, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and more. On Tuesday, scientists at Harvard University and Google DeepMind published a new study in Nature that shows how AI deep reinforcement learning can be used to create a realistic virtual rodent that may help advance behavioral neuroscience and vital research across many fields.

Behavioral neuroscience, also known as psychobiology, physiological psychology, biopsychology, or biological psychology, is the study of the neural and biological basis underlying behavior in humans and animals. It is an interdisciplinary discipline that combines elements from physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and psychology. Psychobiology is useful for robotics, artificial intelligence , developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychiatry , neuroendocrinology, audiology, biochemistry, drug discovery, biotechnology, health care, medicine, assistive technology, pharmaceutical, speech-language pathology, veterinary, and other fields.

“Animals have exquisite control of their bodies, allowing them to perform a diverse range of behaviors,” wrote Bence P. Ölveczky, Ph.D., a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology for brain science at Harvard, who led the study in collaboration with Josh Merel, Jesse D. Marshall, Leonard Hasenclever, Ugne Klibaite, Amanda Gellis, Yuval Tassa, Greg Wayne, Diego Aldarondo, and Matthew Botvinick. “How such control is implemented by the brain, however, remains unclear.”

How does one go about creating a realistic virtual mammal in silico —in this case, algorithmically modeling rats in motion? For this study, the AI design includes a vision encoder, a proprioceptive encoder, a core module trained by backpropagation, and a policy module consisting of one or more long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks.

The researchers wrote,

“We used deep reinforcement learning to train the virtual agent to imitate the behavior of freely moving rats, thus allowing us to compare neural activity recorded in real rats to the network activity of a virtual rodent mimicking their behavior.”

Deep reinforcement learning is a type of AI machine learning that combines deep neural networks with reinforcement learning in a manner that allows an agent to learn behavior through the results of actions. Deep neural networks (DNN) are a type of artificial neural network (ANN) with an input layer, an output layer, and many hidden layers for processing and passing data in between. The greater the number of layers, the deeper the neural network.

In artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning algorithms learn from outcomes to determine the next steps with the goal of achieving the best outcome to maximize the reward. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a type of AI machine learning that simulates learning by trial and error and feedback refined by environmental interaction. Reinforcement learning is used for complex, real-world scenarios where present-day decisions impact future outcomes. The type of reinforcement can be positive, negative, punishment , extinction, intermittent, or continuous. A real-world example of a type of analog reinforcement learning is giving a pet dog a food treat when commanded to “sit” as a reward and form of positive reinforcement. Reinforcement learning is used for robotics, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, computer gaming, recommendation engines, personalized medicine, and more uses.

The researchers developed a virtual rat body using a physics-based engine for model-based control and actual measurements of laboratory rats. They then tasked the virtual rodent with a variety of tasks, such as jumping, foraging, escaping, and double touching. Scientists reported,

“We found that neural activity in the sensorimotor striatum and motor cortex was better predicted by the virtual rodent’s network activity than by any features of the real rat’s movements, consistent with both regions implementing inverse dynamics.”

This is an exciting development that may accelerate both artificial intelligence and neuroscience. According to the scientists, they can completely monitor neural activity, behavior, and sensory inputs, as well as the model’s training goals , variance sources, and connectivity.

“These results demonstrate how physical simulation of biomechanically realistic virtual animals can help interpret the structure of neural activity across behavior and relate it to theoretical principles of motor control,” concluded the researchers.

Copyright © 2024 Cami Rosso. All rights reserved.

Cami Rosso writes about science, technology, innovation, and leadership.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• International
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience