Associative learning of pure tones is known to cause tonotopic map expansion in the auditory cortex (ACx), but the function this plasticity sub-serves is unclear. We developed an automated training platform called the "Educage," which was used to train mice on a go/no-go auditory discrimination task to their perceptual limits, for difficult discriminations among pure tones or natural sounds. Spiking responses of excitatory and inhibitory parvalbumin (PV+) L2/3 neurons in mouse ACx revealed learning-induced overrepresentation of the learned frequencies, as expected from previous literature. The coordinated plasticity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons supports a role for PV+ neurons in homeostatic maintenance of excitation-inhibition balance within the circuit. Using a novel computational model to study auditory tuning curves, we show that overrepresentation of the learned tones does not necessarily improve discrimination performance of the network to these tones. In a separate set of experiments, we trained mice to discriminate among natural sounds. Perceptual learning of natural sounds induced "sparsening" and decorrelation of the neural response, consequently improving discrimination of these complex sounds. This signature of plasticity in A1 highlights its role in coding natural sounds. Copyright © 2020 Maor, Shwartz-Ziv, Feigin, Elyada, Sompolinsky and Mizrahi.Preclinical animal studies have continuously reported the possibility of long-lasting neurotoxic effects after general anesthesia in young animals. Such studies also show that the neurological changes induced by anesthesia in young animals differ by their neurodevelopmental stage. Exposure to anesthetic agents increase dendritic spines and induce sex-dependent changes of excitatory/inhibitory synaptic transmission in late postnatal mice, a critical synaptogenic period. However, the mechanisms underlying these changes remain unclear. selleck Abnormal activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway, an important regulator of neurodevelopment, has also been shown to induce similar changes during neurodevelopment. Interestingly, previous studies show that exposure to general anesthetics during neurodevelopment can activate the mTOR signaling pathway. This study, therefore, evaluated the role of mTOR signaling after exposing postnatal day (PND) 16/17 mice to sevoflurane, a widely used inhalation agent in pediatric patients. We first confirmed that a 2-h exposure of 2.5% sevoflurane could induce widespread mTOR phosphorylation in both male and female mice. Pretreatment with the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin not only prevented anesthesia-induced mTOR phosphorylation, but also the increase in mitochondrial respiration and male-dependent enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission. However, the changes in inhibitory synaptic transmission that appear after anesthesia in female mice were not affected by rapamycin pretreatment. Our results suggest that mTOR inhibitors may act as potential therapeutic agents for anesthesia-induced changes in the developing brain. Copyright © 2020 Ju, Ryu, Cui, Lee, Park, Hong, Yoo, Lee, Shin, Yoon, Kweon, Kim, Ko, Heo and Chung.Sleep stage classification is an open challenge in the field of sleep research. Considering the relatively small size of datasets used by previous studies, in this paper we used the Sleep Heart Health Study dataset from the National Sleep Research Resource database. A long short-term memory (LSTM) network using a time-frequency spectra of several consecutive 30 s time points as an input was used to perform the sleep stage classification. Four classical convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using a time-frequency spectra of a single 30 s time point as an input were used for comparison. Results showed that, when considering the temporal information within the time-frequency spectrum of a single 30 s time point, the LSTM network had a better classification performance than the CNNs. Moreover, when additional temporal information was taken into consideration, the classification performance of the LSTM network gradually increased. It reached its peak when temporal information from three consecutive 30 s time points was considered, with a classification accuracy of 87.4% and a Cohen's Kappa coefficient of 0.8216. Compared with CNNs, our results indicate that for sleep stage classification, the temporal information within the data or the features extracted from the data should be considered. LSTM networks take this temporal information into account, and thus, may be more suitable for sleep stage classification. Copyright © 2020 Xu, Yang, Sun, Liu and Qin.Background Browning of white adipose tissues (WAT) is recognized as a novel way to combat obesity and its related comorbidities. Thus, a lot of dietary agents contributing to browning of WAT have been identified. Objective In this study, we try to explore the mechanism of the browning of WAT induced by resveratrol (Res) in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Methods The levels of cell viability and lipid accumulation were evaluated under different concentrations of Res. Cell signaling pathway analysis was performed to investigate the possible mechanisms of the WAT browning effect of Res in 3T3-L1 cells. Results We found that Res induced the brown fat-like phenotype by activating protein expressions of brown adipocyte-specific markers, such as peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-γ), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator-1 alpha (PGC-1α), and uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). Besides, Res reduced lipid accumulation, as shown by Oil Red O staining. The increased small lipid droplets implied that Res-treated 3T3-L1 adipocytes had some features of brown adipocytes. The brown fat-like phenotype in 3T3-L1 adipocytes induced by Res was possibly mediated by activation of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), as brown adipocyte-specific markers were decreased by rapamycin, an inhibitor of mTOR and the MHY1485 treatment, an activator of mTOR, showed the similar effect of Res on browning markers. Conclusions Res induced brown-like adipocyte phenotype in 3T3-L1 adipocytes partly via mTOR pathway, which provided new insights into the utilization of Res to prevent obesity and related comorbidities. © 2020 Zihui Liu et al.