Anhedonia is a reduction in enjoyment, motivation, or interest. It is common across mental health disorders and a harbinger of poor treatment outcomes. The enjoyment aspect, termed ‘consummatory anhedonia’, in particular poses fundamental questions about how the brain constructs rewards: what processes determine how intensely a reward is experienced? Here, we outline limitations of existing […]

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is a category of hearing loss that often leads to difficulty in understanding speech and other sounds. Auditory system dysfunction, including deafness and auditory trauma, results in cognitive deficits via neuroplasticity. Cognitive impairment (CI) refers to an abnormality in the brain’s higher intellectual processes related to learning, memory, thinking and judgment […]

In humans and other animals, individuals can actively respond to the specific needs of others. However, the neural circuits supporting helping behaviors are underspecified. In recent work, Zhang, Wu, and colleagues identified a new role for the anterior cingulate cortex in the encoding and regulation of targeted helping behavior (allolicking) in mice. Read Full Article […]