Decision Uncertainty as a Context for Motor Memory

Decision Uncertainty as a Contextual Cue for Motor Memory Background In a penalty shootout during a soccer match, players may face two distinctly different decision-making scenarios. For example, a player may decisively kick the ball to the right corner after seeing the goalkeeper move to the other side, or he may kick the same way without being ce...

Mendelian Randomization Evidence for the Causal Effect of Mental Well-being on Healthy Aging

Research Report: Causal Effects of Mental Well-being on Healthy Aging Research Background With the significant increase in average life expectancy, aging issues have become increasingly prominent. Challenges such as comorbidity, disability, and the overall social stability of healthcare services and finances have become more severe. Achieving healt...

Comparing Experience- and Description-based Economic Preferences Across 11 Countries

Comparison of Experiences and Descriptions of Basic Economic Preferences in 11 Countries Background and Motivation Recent studies have shown that humans exhibit a high degree of context-dependency in encoding the value of rewards, which in some cases leads to suboptimal decisions. However, it remains unclear whether this computational limitation is...

The Necessity of Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Prosocial Motivation

The Necessity of the Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex for Prosocial Motivation Research Background and Motivation The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a crucial role in decision-making processes. Functional neuroimaging studies indicate that the vmPFC is key in handling rewards and efforts and is also associated with prosocial behav...

Artifactually Inflates Brain-Wide Functional Connectivity Throughout Functional MRI Scans

Functional Connectivity Across the Brain and Temporally Enhanced Non-neuronal Low-Frequency Oscillation (SLFO) Blood Flow Signal Based on Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scans In the field of neuroscience, a core question is how the brain’s connectivity reconfigures over time to support adaptive functional changes. These dynamically changing ...

CRISPRi-based Circuits to Control Gene Expression in Plants

CRISPRi-based Circuits to Control Gene Expression in Plants

Academic Background In the field of plant biotechnology, traditional gene manipulation methods focus on producing the desired phenotypes and cellular activities through continuous transgene expression. However, strong continuous promoters may lead to gene silencing, metabolic burdens, or other adverse effects on yield, preventing the full realizati...

Generation of Allogeneic CAR-NKT Cells from Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells Using a Clinically Guided Culture Method

Generation of Clinically Applicable CAR-NKT Cells Research Background Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of B-cell malignancies and multiple myeloma. However, the use of autologous CAR-T cell products presents challenges such as high costs, long manufacturing ...

Development of Multiplexed Orthogonal Base Editor (MOBE) Systems

In recent years, with the rapid development of gene editing tools, especially the introduction of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, it has become possible to precisely modify specific DNA sequences. Currently, the introduction of single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) as a powerful tool for studying gene function and disease associations is particularly important...

Long-term Intravital Subcellular Imaging with Confocal Scanning Light-Field Microscopy

Long-term Intravital Subcellular Imaging with Confocal Scanning Light-Field Microscopy

Breakthrough in Long-term Live Subcellular Imaging: Study of Confocal Scanning Light-Field Microscopy Research Background Long-term live cell dynamic observation is indispensable in studying physiological pathological processes such as immune response and brain function, requiring high spatiotemporal resolution and low phototoxicity. Existing confo...

Mapping Medically Relevant RNA Isoform Diversity in the Aged Human Frontal Cortex with Deep Long-Read RNA-Seq

Academic Background RNA isoforms play a critical role in gene expression regulation. On average, human protein-coding genes contain over eight RNA isoforms, leading to nearly four distinct protein-coding sequences. Traditional short-read sequencing technologies, due to their limitations in read length, cannot accurately assemble and quantify RNA is...