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Section: Neuroscience ; Topics: Psychological and cognitive sciences, Health sciences, Neuroscience

Brain on Pause: How Sedentary Behavior Impacts Inhibitory Control Across Life

Lebon, Florent; Bertrand, Mathilde Fiona; Genand, Boris; Mourey, France; Ruffino, Célia; Papaxanthis, Charalambos; Gaveau, Jeremie; Rozand, Vianney

10.24072/pcjournal.638 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e113
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Inhibitory control, an important marker of daily-life autonomy, is impaired with age. However, the role of the level of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) in the lifelong decline of such cognitive-motor function remains to be elucidated. In the current study, we probed the association between inhibitory control and three predictors: age, PA and SB, by means of multiple regressions. Seventy-eight individuals, aged 18-88 years old, performed the Go-NoGo and Stop-Signal tasks to estimate motor impulse control and reactive inhibition, respectively. We measured the level of SB and PA during 4 consecutive days using accelerometers. Our main finding is that SB, but not PA, predicted reactive inhibition, similarly to age. In other words, a very old person with low SB would be more likely to stop an action than a younger person with higher SB. Our data suggest that achieving the recommended level of PA may not mitigate the association between low inhibitory function and high SB.
Section: Health & Movement Sciences ; Topics: Physiology, Psychological and cognitive sciences, Neuroscience

Superficial layers in M1 and beyond: Neural evidence of cortical and spinal activation during imagined movements

Lebon, Florent; Neige, Cecilia

10.24072/pcjournal.639 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e112
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Motor imagery is the mental simulation of an action without any overt movement, but shares common neural substrates with motor execution. In particular, the involvement of the primary motor cortex (M1) has been debated, and recently, Persichetti et al. (2020) probed, in an elegant experiment, the activation of different cortical layers within the hand-knob M1 area, during actual and imagined movements. By means of the vascular space occupancy technique, they achieved sub-millimeter spatial specificity without the vasculature bias of the BOLD signal. The main finding was that imagined finger movements activated only the superficial layers II/III with mainly cortico-cortical connections to M1, whereas actual finger movements activated both superficial layers and the deeper layers Vb/VI with descending corticospinal projections. This would nicely explain the absence of muscle activity during motor imagery. However, this exclusive activation of superficial layers in M1 during motor imagery is at odds with numerous observations in the current literature. In this opinion letter, we present several studies with different methodological approaches that found neural modulation downstream the pyramidal cells while imagining. These modulations following motor imagery practice, besides the changes within M1, would also explain improvement in motor learning. We also discussed the results by Persichetti et al. in regards of their protocol.
Section: Evolutionary Biology ; Topics: Evolution, Genetics/genomics, Microbiology

Comparative genomics of Rickettsiella bacteria reveal variable metabolic pathways potentially involved in symbiotic interactions with arthropods

Floriano, Anna M.; El-Filali, Adil; Amoros, Julien; Buysse, Marie; Jourdan-Pineau, Hélène; Sprong, Hein; Kohl, Robert; Dirks, Ron P.; Schaap, Peter; Koehorst, Jasper; Nijsse, Bart; Bouchon, Didier; Daubin, Vincent; Vavre, Fabrice; Duron, Olivier

10.24072/pcjournal.633 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e111
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Members of the Rickettsiella genus (order: Legionellales) are emerging as widespread bacteria associated with insects, arachnids, and crustaceans. While some Rickettsiella strains are highly virulent pathogens, others are maternally inherited endosymbionts that manipulate arthropod phenotypes, including the induction of defensive symbiosis and cytoplasmic incompatibility. However, the genomic diversity of Rickettsiella remains largely unexplored, and their genetic potential to induce complex phenotypes in arthropods is only partially understood. In this study, we sequenced five new Rickettsiella genomes isolated from three tick species. Through comparative genomics, we observed that Rickettsiella members share similar metabolic capabilities, and collectively lack virulence genes from pathogenic Legionellales. Additional analysis of Rickettsiella genomes revealed significant variability in metabolic properties related to endosymbiosis. Specifically, their capacity to biosynthesize certain B vitamins and heme varies, suggesting a functional role of some Rickettsiella strains in the nutrition of their arthropod hosts. Some Rickettsiella genomes harbour homologs of Wolbachia cif genes, the cause of Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility, suggesting that Rickettsiella may use a similar molecular mechanism to manipulate the reproduction of their arthropod hosts. Phylogenomics further revealed that tick-borne Rickettsiella exhibit distinct evolutionary origins within the genus, indicating that Rickettsiella have undergone repeated horizontal transfers between ticks and other arthropods.
Section: Infections ; Topics: Ecology, Genetics/genomics, Microbiology

Data mining of public genomic repositories: harnessing off-target reads to expand microbial pathogen genomic resources

Richard, Damien; Poulicard, Nils

10.24072/pcjournal.637 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e110
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As sequencing technologies become more affordable and genomic databases expand continuously, the reuse of publicly available sequencing data emerges as a powerful strategy for studying microbial pathogens. Indeed, raw sequencing reads generated for the study of a given organism often contain reads originating from the associated microbiota. This review explores how such off-target reads can be detected and used for the study of microbial pathogens. We present genomic data mining as a method to identify relevant sequencing runs from petabase-scale databases, highlighting recent methodological advances that allow efficient database querying. We then briefly outline methods designed to retrieve relevant data and associated metadata, and provide an overview of common downstream analysis pipelines. We discuss how such approaches have (i) expanded the known genetic diversity of microbial pathogens, (ii) enriched our understanding of their spatiotemporal distribution, and (iii) highlighted previously unrecognized ecological interactions involving microbial pathogens. However, these analyses often rely on the completeness and accuracy of accompanying metadata, which remain highly variable. We detail common pitfalls, including data contamination and metadata misannotations, and suggest strategies for result interpretation. Ultimately, while data mining cannot replace dedicated studies, it constitutes an essential and complementary tool for microbial pathogen research. Broader utility will depend on improved data standardization and systematic genomic monitoring across ecosystems.

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The network image was drawn by Martin Grandjean: A force-based network visualization CC BY-SA