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Not all foods, of course, are linked to nightmares and sleep disruption, and some may even support better sleep. Close to 18% of people who regularly eat fruits reported better sleep, along with 12% of people who consume a lot of vegetables, and 13% of people who drink herbal tea.

Nielsen does not believe the current research remotely closes the book on the food and sleep and dreaming link, seeing a need for a lot of future work. “We need to study more people of different ages, from different walks of life,” he said in the statement. “Experimental studies are also needed to determine if people can truly detect the effects of specific foods on dreams. We would like to run a study in which we ask people to ingest cheese products versus some control food before sleep to see if this alters their sleep or dreams.” 

To map the mammalian brain and its various functions with increasing precision, neuroscientists rely on high-resolution imaging techniques and other advanced experimental tools. These now include high-density silicon probes, needle-like devices integrating several thousand electrodes that can be inserted into brain tissue to pick up voltage changes associated with the firing of neurons.

These devices have so far been reliably used to monitor and study the activity of neurons in the rodent brain. However, they proved less effective for studying the brains of non-human primates (NHPs), such as macaques, which more closely resemble the human brain.

A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) consortium of researchers at Columbia , Stanford and UC-Berkeley recently demonstrated the potential of the Neuropixels 1.0 NHP probe. This device is a more scalable probe developed by IMEC for collecting brain-wide and high-resolution neural recordings in macaques and other NHPs. Their research project is described in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience.

“Our paper was inspired by a fundamental need in the neuroscience community to overcome the limitations of existing neural recording technologies in NHPs,” Eric M. Trautmann, first author of the paper from Columbia, told Medical Xpress.

“The original Neuropixels 1.0 probe, while transformative for rodent models, had limited functionality in NHPs due to its 10-mm length, which restricted access to superficial brain targets, and a thin shank (24 µm) that made insertion through the primate dura mater difficult. Other existing linear arrays are limited in channel count, and surface arrays like the Utah array or floating microwire arrays were confined to superficial cortex and fixed depths.”

Trautmann and his colleagues were looking for a probe that would allow them to accurately and reliably record neural activity in the brains of NHPs and other large animals. They wanted this device to also reliably record the activity of large populations of neurons with single-neuron and single-spike resolution, or in other words, isolate the activity of single neurons and detect individual action potentials.

“The new recording probe developed by IMEC is fabricated as a 54-mm-long monolithic piece of silicon that integrates both the shank and the base electronics,” explained Trautmann. “The probe features a significantly longer, wider, and thicker shank (45 mm long, 125 µm wide, and 90 µm thick) compared to the original Neuropixels 1.0 probe.”

The probe tested by the authors has a total of 4,416 recording sites (i.e., pixels) distributed along the full length of its 45-mm shank and grouped into 11.5 ‘banks’ of 384 channels each. Notably, experimenters can also select one of these ‘pixels ‘ to collect simultaneous recordings across 384 sites, via a switch located under every site.

“The probe utilizes the same low-noise readout channels with programmable gain and digitized at 10-bit resolution on a 130-nm Silicon-on-Insulator CMOS platform as the Neuropixels 1.0,” said Trautmann. “The tip of the shank is mechanically ground to a 25° bevel angle, creating a sharpened tip along both axes to facilitate insertion and minimize tissue damage.”

The new Neuropixels device offers neuroscientists access into deep structures in large brains, such as those of primates, which cannot be accessed by shorter high-density probes. Moreover, its 90 µm thickness and sharper shank allow it to effectively penetrate the tough meninges covering the primate brain and spinal cord.

“Further advantages of our approach include its scalability and high channel count, or in other words, the ability to programmably select 384 channels from over 4,400 sites and collect simultaneous multi-area recording from thousands of neurons,” said Trautman. “This feature allows experimenters to decouple the process of optimizing a recording location from probe positioning, facilitating surveys of neural activity along the entire probe length without moving the probe.”

“Another key advantage of the device is its high spatial resolution, which improves the ability to isolate the activity of individual neurons and facilitates the continuous tracking of neurons even if there is motion between the probe and tissue,” explained Tirin Moore, one of the authors.

Compared to existing technologies, the Neuropixels 1.0 NHP probe is also more cost-effective. It could thus dramatically lower the cost associated with the recording of neurons, with a total system cost ranging between US$7,000 and US$15,000.

“The consortium demonstrates the probe’s potential through four example experiments in macaques, addressing diverse neuroscience questions,” said Trautmann.

The Stanford team showed large-scale surveys of retinotopic organization across multiple extrastriate visual cortical areas, recording thousands of neurons simultaneously and illustrating the orderly shift of receptive fields across cortical depths. “The Columbia team collected stable, large-scale recordings during motor behaviors in superficial and deep structures (e.g., primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, globus pallidus interna, supplementary motor area), demonstrating capture of diverse temporal patterns and improved force prediction with more neurons.”

To further evaluate the probe, the Berkeley team used it to record activity in an area of the NHP brain that is typically difficult to access (i.e., deep inferotemporal cortex face patches), while monkeys looked at images of faces. During a single data collection session, they were able to detect hundreds of neurons that appeared to contribute to the recognition of faces, which would have previously taken years.

“The Columbia team further demonstrated the probe’s utility for studying single-trial correlates of decision-making, showing how LIP and superior colliculus (SC) neuron populations track accumulated evidence and exhibit distinct dynamics only observable through high-yield single-trial analyses,” said Trautmann.

“The high density also facilitated measuring spike-spike correlations between neuron pairs, which is indicative of synaptic connections or shared input, enabling mapping of putative connections across cortical laminae and between regions.”

This recent study could soon open new valuable possibilities for neuroscience research involving large animals. By overcoming various widely reported engineering challenges, the new probe developed at IMEC was found to reliably record the activity of neurons across the brains of non-human primates.

“We successfully surmounted significant engineering challenges related to the fabrication of silicon probes that exceed standard photolithographic reticle sizes through methods like stitching and by designing for mechanical strength and flexibility (stress compensation layers) for the long shank,” said Barun Dutta from IMEC.

“This technology enables new classes of experiments previously deemed impractical or impossible. This includes detailed electrophysiological mapping of brain areas at single-neuron and single-spike resolution, measuring spike-spike correlations between cells, and conducting simultaneous brain-wide recordings at an unprecedented scale.”

The Neuropixels 1.0 NHP probe could be deployed in other laboratories worldwide, reducing the efforts, resources and costs currently associated with studying the brains of large animals. “In fact, in the short time since the probes became available, more than 50 NHP labs have adopted them,” remarked Barun Dutta.

The probes could also enable more advanced and complex neuroscience experiments involving NHP, which could lead to new exciting discoveries.

“The Neuropixels 1.0 NHP facilitates a more comprehensive and unbiased mapping of neural activity across multiple brain regions and depths, which is essential for understanding the coordinated action of large neuronal populations involved in sensory, motor, and cognitive operations,” said Trautmann.

“It could also allow researchers to perform single-trial analyses of neural activity at high resolution, which is particularly critical for studying cognitive functions, where brain processes can vary across task repetitions. Two good examples of this are described in recent papers in Nature and Neuron from the Stanford and Columbia teams, respectively.”

If used to map neural circuits, the Neuropixels 1.0 NHP probe could soon also help to better understand how anatomical circuits in the brains of large mammals perform specific computations. While the current version of the device is primarily optimized to perform acute recordings, IMEC is currently working on improving its capabilities and further boosting its potential.

“As part of our next studies, we plan to develop new hardware and test semi-chronic (multiple days or weeks) implantation,” added Trautmann. “This will require new implant designs and is currently an untested but conceivable capability with appropriate insertion methods and hardware. Moreover, we are working on developing probes with intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) capabilities, which is not yet possible. However, the current generation of probes can be used to record alongside stimulation via a separate electrode.”

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Children who go to emergency departments in a mental health crisis and need to be hospitalized often end up stuck there for days, a new study finds. That happens in roughly one in ten of all mental health emergency visits for children enrolled in Medicaid across the country.

The most common mental health crises that led to such extended stays, or boarding, were depressive disorders and suicidal thoughts and attempts, according to the study published in JAMA Health Forum.

“So a child shows up at an emergency department with a mental health condition, [and] about one in ten times, they’re staying for three days or longer,” says lead study author John McConnell, director of the Center for Health Systems Effectiveness at Oregon Health and Science University.

McConnell and his colleagues also found that in a handful of states, including North Carolina, Florida and Maine, as many as 25% of mental health visits led to kids boarding at the emergency department for 3-7 days.

The findings aren’t surprising, says Dr. Jennifer Havens, chair of the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

“But having data like this is very important to see the effect across the country,” she adds. Havens was not involved in the study.

Boarding in the emergency department has been a growing issue across the nation for decades, but the rise has been particularly dramatic in recent years for pediatric mental health cases.

“As the children’s behavioral health crisis nationwide has increased, states have not been able to keep up with behavioral health systems,” says Dr. Rebecca Marshall, an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at OHSU, who also wasn’t involved in the new study.

Though the study looked only at Medicaid claims, the problem happens for children on private health insurance, as well.

“We really have struggled to build capacity over time to increase the number of inpatient beds,” she says. “And so often what happens is kids will come into the hospital, they need an inpatient psychiatric bed and there isn’t one available. So then they wait until a child in one of the psychiatric units discharges and a bed becomes available.”

Many states have a shockingly low number of psychiatric beds for kids, says Marshall. For example, Oregon has only 38 beds for highest need pediatric psychiatric cases. “And then we have less than 200 residential beds, and that’s a lower acuity treatment program that tends to be longer term.”

“There’s an enormous problem across the country with a lack of access to mental health services, both on the [inpatient and] outpatient side,” says Havens. Adequate outpatient services can prevent kids with mental health conditions from reaching a crisis point.

Without adequate outpatient and inpatient mental health care options, families are more likely to take their child to an ER if the child is in a mental health crisis.

But “what they find when they go to the emergency department is that there often isn’t any available care,” says Marshall. “There’s nothing immediate.”

Most ERs don’t even have a child and adolescent psychiatrist, says Havens, “because we’ve just never invested in the resources to have this kind of service for kids.”

And when children in mental health crises end up stuck in ERs for days, their symptoms can worsen even if there’s a psychiatrist on staff.

Most of these children boarding in an ER end up stuck in “one small room,” says Marshall, sometimes a windowless room. “They’re not able to leave the room. They can’t exercise. They’re not able to interact with other kids, which is a really important part of development. And often there are not any kind of additional therapeutic activities that you would find in an inpatient unit.”

“I’m not sure what the right words are, but, [it’s] really challenging, heartbreaking situation for families that have a child and they’re trying to kind of find a place to stabilize them, and they’re stuck in the emergency department,” says McConnell.