Search

The increasing interest from research agencies, governments, and universities in understanding research funding and prioritising research efforts has highlighted the need for reliable and efficient methods for exploring research portfolios. In biomedical research, this involves exploring research across what is normally considered fundamental and applied research. As research done in these different categories does not have the same behaviour, such as time to impact or citation behaviour, it is often important to address them separately. Moreover, research is increasingly complex, interdisciplinary and transversal, and increasingly of translational nature. Currently, there are no available tools, as far as we know, that do this. Scientific publications offer a valuable source of information for this purpose, but the growth in the number of biomedical publications makes manual inspection and classification of papers unfeasible. To address this challenge, we present BATRACIO, a new task that aims to classify biomedical publications into the following research types: Basic, Translational, Clinical, and Public Health. We develop and release an expert annotated dataset for the task and evaluate state-of-the-art models to determine the effectiveness of domain-specific pre-trained language models in comparison to general pre-trained language models. We also investigate methods for handling imbalanced datasets in the biomedical domain with adjacent categories. Our results demonstrate that domain-specific pre-trained language models can effectively classify scientific papers based on the research type, overcoming challenges such as the use of abbreviations and acronyms. These findings have important implications for policymakers and funding agencies in understanding research activities and allocating resources effectively.

Metabotropic glutamate 5 receptors (mGlu5) are thought to play an important role in mediating emotional information processing. In particular, negative allosteric modulators (NAMs) of mGlu5 have received a lot of attention as potential novel treatments for several neuropsychiatric diseases, including anxiety-related disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of pre- and post-training mGlu5 inactivation in cued fear conditioned mice on neuronal oscillatory activity during fear retrieval. For this study we used the recently developed mGlu5 NAM Alloswicth-1 administered systemically. Injection of Alloswicth-1 before, but not after, fear conditioning resulted in a significant decrease in freezing upon fear retrieval. Mice injected with Alloswicth-1 pre-training were also implanted with recording microelectrodes into both the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and ventral hippocampus (vHPC). The recordings revealed a reduction in theta rhythmic activity (4–12 Hz) in both the mPFC and vHPC during fear retrieval. These results indicate that inhibition of mGlu5 signaling alters local oscillatory activity in principal components of the fear brain network underlying a reduced response to a predicted threat.

Amongst the many neurotransmitter systems causally linked to the expression of social behavior, glutamate appears to play a pivotal role. In particular, metabotropic glutamate 5 (mGlu5) receptors have received much attention as its altered function has been reported in several mouse models of autism spectrum disorders and mental retardation. Inhibition of the activity of mGlu5 receptors by means of genetic or pharmacological manipulations improved social deficits in some of these animal models. However, in normal wild-type (WT) mice, pharmacological blockade of mGlu5 receptors yielded inconsistent results. The aim of our study was to investigate the actual contribution of decreased or absent mGlu5 receptor function in sociability and anxiety-like behavior as well as to explore the impact of mGlu5 receptor ablation on the pattern of brain activation upon social exposure. Here we show that Grm5-/- mice display higher social preference indexes compared to age-matched WT mice in the three-chambered social task. However, this effect was accompanied by a decreased exploratory activity during the test and increased anxiety-like behavior. Contrary to mGlu5 receptor ablation, the mGlu5 receptor negative allosteric modulator 3-((2-methyl-1,4-thiazolyl)ethynyl)pyridine (MTEP) induced anxiolytic effects without affecting social preference in WT mice. By mapping c-Fos expression in 21 different brain regions known to be involved in social interaction, we detected a specific activation of the prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral septum in Grm5-/- mice following social interaction. C-Fos expression correlation-based network and graph theoretical analyses further suggested dysfunctional connectivity and disruption of the functional brain network generated during social interaction in Grm5-/- mice. The lack of mGlu5 receptors resulted in profound rearrangements of the functional impact of prefrontal and hippocampal regions in the social interaction network. In conclusion, this work reveals a complex contribution of mGlu5 receptors in sociability and anxiety and points to the importance of these receptors in regulating brain functional connectivity during social interaction.

Metabotropic glutamate 5 receptors (mGlu5) are thought to play an important role in mediating emotional information processing. In particular, negative allosteric modulators (NAMs) of mGlu5 have received a lot of attention as potential novel treatments for several neuropsychiatric diseases, including anxiety-related disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of pre- and post-training mGlu5 inactivation in cued fear conditioned mice on neuronal oscillatory activity during fear retrieval. For this study we used the recently developed mGlu5 NAM Alloswicth-1 administered systemically. Injection of Alloswicth-1 before, but not after, fear conditioning resulted in a significant decrease in freezing upon fear retrieval. Mice injected with Alloswicth-1 pre-training were also implanted with recording microelectrodes into both the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and ventral hippocampus (vHPC). The recordings revealed a reduction in theta rhythmic activity (4–12 Hz) in both the mPFC and vHPC during fear retrieval. These results indicate that inhibition of mGlu5 signaling alters local oscillatory activity in principal components of the fear brain network underlying a reduced response to a predicted threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst the many neurotransmitter systems causally linked to the expression of social behavior, glutamate appears to play a pivotal role. In particular, metabotropic glutamate 5 (mGlu5) receptors have received much attention as its altered function has been reported in several mouse models of autism spectrum disorders and mental retardation. Inhibition of the activity of mGlu5 receptors by means of genetic or pharmacological manipulations improved social deficits in some of these animal models. However, in normal wild-type (WT) mice, pharmacological blockade of mGlu5 receptors yielded inconsistent results. The aim of our study was to investigate the actual contribution of decreased or absent mGlu5 receptor function in sociability and anxiety-like behavior as well as to explore the impact of mGlu5 receptor ablation on the pattern of brain activation upon social exposure. Here we show that Grm5 -/- mice display higher social preference indexes compared to age-matched WT mice in the three-chambered social task. However, this effect was accompanied by a decreased exploratory activity during the test and increased anxiety-like behavior. Contrary to mGlu5 receptor ablation, the mGlu5 receptor negative allosteric modulator 3-((2-methyl-1,4-thiazolyl)ethynyl)pyridine (MTEP) induced anxiolytic effects without affecting social preference in WT mice. By mapping c-Fos expression in 21 different brain regions known to be involved in social interaction, we detected a specific activation of the prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral septum in Grm5 -/- mice following social interaction. C-Fos expression correlation-based network and graph theoretical analyses further suggested dysfunctional connectivity and disruption of the functional brain network generated during social interaction in Grm5 -/- mice. The lack of mGlu5 receptors resulted in profound rearrangements of the functional impact of prefrontal and hippocampal regions in the social interaction network. In conclusion, this work reveals a complex contribution of mGlu5 receptors in sociability and anxiety and points to the importance of these receptors in regulating brain functional connectivity during social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]