Biology subjects

Booth, J. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Booth, J. R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Short-Term Developmental Trajectories of Dorsal-Ventral Pathways and Their Relationships with First-Grade Learning

The first year of formal schooling is a year of foundational reading and math learning, and individual differences emerging within this single year predict academic achievement decades later. Yet, how brain changes throughout this critical year relate to individual differences in reading and math learning remains uncharacterized. In this pre-registered study (https://osf.io/97ybe), we acquired monthly both behavioral assessments of reading- and math-learning, and diffusion-weighted MRI scans to measure white matter microstructure, across the first-grade year. Behavioral learning trajectories follow either a sigmoid for reading or an inverted-U for math. Month-to-month microstructural changes in the right middle longitudinal fasciculus predicted corresponding changes in math performance, but not in reading. Findings highlight white matter microstructure as a dynamic substrate of early math learning, and reveal a more general principle: rapid changes in white-matter microstructure during the foundational learning window may be associated with distinct academic domains. FundingR01 HD114489

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Microbiota reduce Drosophila triacylglyceride density by providing pantothenate

Metabolism follows ground-rules that evolved in ancient bacteria: as a legacy, animal gut microbiota have abundant opportunity to modulate host metabolism, via conserved mechanisms. When these effects are beneficial, natural selection should favour hosts that reciprocally support bacterial growth. Whether microbes simply nourish hosts or more profoundly reprogram host metabolism remains to be established. Here we show that Acetobacter promote Drosophila coenzyme A, an ancient signalling metabolite, reprogramming host metabolism and generating a state that reciprocally supports bacterial growth. Impairing pathways from bacterial pantothenate to host coenzyme A increases host lipid storage, reduces nitrogen excretion, and diminishes bacterial load. These processes correspond to reprogrammed host carbohydrate handling and tissue-specific acyl-CoA pools, but live bacteria and short-chain fatty acids are dispensable. These results outline a simple microbial basis for complex host metabolic effects, via mechanisms that precede the origins of metazoa, facilitating metabolic and symbiotic homeostasis.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2025

Neural trajectories reveal orchestration of cortical coding underlying natural language composition

Language is a hierarchically structured system that enables humans to communicate complex meanings. Despite recent advances, the neurocomputational mechanism underlying the composition of natural language remains unclear. Building on the neural population theory, we investigated how neural trajectories in latent spaces underpin natural language composition that integrates diverse lexical content and syntactic relations. We found that neural trajectories derived from human neocortical responses show an orchestration of distinct coding strategies during naturalistic story comprehension. Neural latent geometry is primarily associated with syntactic relations and exhibits more efficient compression relative to lexical content. We further demonstrate that these trajectories can be simulated by brain-inspired computing systems with near-critical dynamics and a preference for historical information. Overall, by positioning structure-based integration as a key computation of natural language comprehension, our findings provide a novel perspective on the mechanism underlying real-world language use and emphasize the importance of contextual information in the development of brain-inspired intelligent systems.

neuroscience↗