Delayed gratification in the adult brain

Toward reframing brain-social dynamics: current assumptions and future challenges

Evolutionary analyses suggest that the human social brain and sociality appeared together. The two fundamental tools that accelerated the concurrent emergence of the social brain and sociality include learning and plasticity. The prevailing core idea is that the primate brain and the cortex in particular became reorganised over the course of evolution to facilitate dynamic adaptation to ongoing changes in physical and social environments. Encouraged by computational or survival demands or even by instinctual drives for living in social groups, the brain eventually learned how to learn from social experience via its massive plastic capacity. A fundamental framework for modeling these orchestrated dynamic responses is that social plasticity relies upon neuroplasticity. In the present article, we first provide a glimpse into the concepts of plasticity, experience, with emphasis on social experience. We then acknowledge and integrate the current theoretical concepts to highlight five key intertwined assumptions within social neuroscience that underlie empirical approaches for explaining the brain-social dynamics. We suggest that this epistemological view provides key insights into the ontology of current conceptual frameworks driving future research to successfully deal with new challenges and possible caveats in favour of the formulation of novel assumptions. In the light of contemporary societal challenges, such as global pandemics, natural disasters, violent conflict, and other human tragedies, discovering the mechanisms of social brain plasticity will provide new approaches to support adaptive brain plasticity and social resilience.

Enriched Environment and Exercise Enhance Stem Cell Therapy for Stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, and Huntington’s Disease

Stem cells, specifically embryonic stem cells (ESCs), mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs), and neural progenitor stem cells (NSCs), are a possible treatment for stroke, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Huntington’s disease (HD). Current preclinical data suggest stem cell transplantation is a potential treatment for these chronic conditions that lack effective long-term treatment options. Finding treatments with a wider therapeutic window and harnessing a disease-modifying approach will likely improve clinical outcomes. The overarching concept of stem cell therapy entails the use of immature cells, while key in recapitulating brain development and presents the challenge of young grafted cells forming neural circuitry with the mature host brain cells. To this end, exploring strategies designed to nurture graft-host integration will likely enhance the reconstruction of the elusive neural circuitry. Enriched environment (EE) and exercise facilitate stem cell graft-host reconstruction of neural circuitry. It may involve at least a two-pronged mechanism whereby EE and exercise create a conducive microenvironment in the host brain, allowing the newly transplanted cells to survive, proliferate, and differentiate into neural cells; vice versa, EE and exercise may also train the transplanted immature cells to learn the neurochemical, physiological, and anatomical signals in the brain towards better functional graft-host connectivity.

Brain Plasticity in Humans and Model Systems: Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions

Plasticity, and in particular, neurogenesis, is a promising target to treat and prevent a wide variety of diseases (e.g., epilepsy, stroke, dementia). There are different types of plasticity, which vary with age, brain region, and species. These observations stress the importance of defining plasticity along temporal and spatial dimensions. We review recent studies focused on brain plasticity across the lifespan and in different species. One main theme to emerge from this work is that plasticity declines with age but that we have yet to map these different forms of plasticity across species. As part of this effort, we discuss our recent progress aimed to identify corresponding ages across species, and how this information can be used to map temporal variation in plasticity from model systems to humans.