#striatum

[compactqualia]

The demo for Striatum is now available!

Striatum on Steam

A quickplay and replayable first-person point-and-click adventure with a low-poly 3D retro style about getting ready for a party, featuring

[elizjjwold]

by Elizabeth Johnson-Wold

[bpod-bpod]

Pathway for Movement

Huntington’s disease is an incurable inherited condition where brain cells progressively die. Caused by a mutation to the huntingtin gene, the disease has wide ranging behavioural and cognitive effects, including the inability to stop unwanted movements. Huntington’s motor symptoms originate in a brain area called the striatum. Now scientists have looked at how neurons in this part of the brain behave in mice genetically engineered to develop a Huntington’s-like condition. This image shows one such neuron illuminated in red. The team found that when levels of the huntingtin gene were lowered, some of the abnormal behaviours they noticed in these cells could be reversed. In future, these types of such insights into the role of the striatal pathway in Huntington’s disease could lead to gene therapies that target the striatum and help patients regain control of their movements.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Image from work by Luis Carrillo-Reid and colleagues

Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, April 2019

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[frederiquedaubal]

Je fonds encore #Darwin and friends #ice #overprint #future #nature #striatum https://www.instagram.com/daubalfred/p/BvaFAlnBQ50/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=b6v6yasoj8ma

[neurosciencenews]

'Compulsivity Circuit' in Heavy Drinkers Identified

The findings provide evidence for a "compulsivity circuit" that may drive alcohol-seeking behavior that is resistant to negative consequences.

The research is in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. (full access paywall)

[currentsinbiology]

Hidden deep in the brain, a map that guides animals' movements

New research has revealed that deep in the brain, in a structure called striatum, all possible movements that an animal can do are represented in a map of neural activity. If we think of neural activity as the coordinates of this map, then similar movements have similar coordinates, being represented closer in the map, while actions that are more different have more distant coordinates and are further away.

The study, led by researchers at Columbia University and the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, was published today in Neuron.

"From the ears to the toes and everything in between, every move the body makes is determined by a unique pattern of brain-cell activity, but until now, and using the map analogy, we only had some pieces of information, like single/isolated latitudes and longitudes but not an actual map. This study was like looking at this map for the first time." said Rui Costa, DVM, PhD, a neuroscientist and a principal investigator at Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and investigator at the Champalimaud Research at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon.

"The spatiotemporal organization of the striatum encodes action space," Neuron (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.08.015

[autisticadvocacy]

Conventional wisdom holds that people with autism don't get hooked on alcohol or other drugs, but new evidence suggests otherwise.

Many think that autistic don’t get hooked on alcohol or other drugs, but new evidence suggests otherwise

[compactqualia]

So my girlfriend and I have always wanted to do game development. We had both done our own solo projects and got experience separately over our lives, but about a year ago we finally started working together, doing a couple smaller game jam projects.

The last one we did looked like this:

It's called Look: A Game! and is up on our itch.

We challenged ourselves in so many ways to finish that game. It was our first 3d project, and that in itself was intimidating. In the end, we had a short concept piece in which you explored your apartment, collecting items to get ready for a party. And that was about what it was.

But we had more ambitious plans, so when we completed the game jam, we didn't feel done. It wasn't everything we knew it was supposed to be.

So we continued where we left off, and started development on Striatum:

We spent over half a year pushing ourselves to learn and grow our skills, and keep coming back to this project everyday (as two ladies with adhd, that is especially challenging). We are getting close to it being fully complete, and there will be a demo up in time for Summer Next Fest on steam.

We now have a fully explorable apartment full of hundreds of items to find, collect, and interact with. There are multiple npcs each with their own branching dialogue paths, accessed through the medium of an in-game cell phone interface. The cell phone outputs notifications to the game screen and has additional apps inside.

We've challenged ourselves to make as polished an experience as we can, and I don't think either of us imagined we would have come so far at the start of the project. We've made something we think is good, and is special to us, and no matter what, is very us.

If you have at least 15 minutes, and a love for strange point and click adventures, please consider checking out the demo when it's out, and if you enjoy it, we hope you will wishlist and return for the full experience.

Check out Striatum here

~ Mia Malaise