Biology subjects

Koul, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Koul, A..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Neural and behavioural manifold dynamics align across interacting individuals

Coordinating actions with others is fundamental for social behaviour, requiring the nervous system to continuously adapt motor output to a partner's evolving behaviour. Yet the neural population principles supporting such coordination remain poorly understood. To address this, we investigated interpersonal coordination across two dual-EEG studies comprising 44 dyads (88 participants) engaged in either instructed finger movement synchronization or spontaneous face-to-face interaction. Combining kinematics-informed deep contrastive learning with dynamical-systems modelling, we identified low-dimensional neural manifolds. These manifolds aligned geometrically and temporally across interacting partners, mirrored their coordinated behaviour, and uncovered interpersonal alignment not captured by traditional synchrony measures. Importantly, these manifolds exhibited flexible attractor-like organization consistent with a synergistic, dynamical account of motor control, with attractor properties that were co-regulated across partners. Collectively, we propose a novel mechanism in which interpersonal coordination emerges through the intermittent updating of internally organized dynamics by a partner's movements. More broadly, our results establish movement-informed latent-space modeling as a framework for uncovering the low-dimensional population dynamics linking neural activity, neuromuscular control and interpersonal coordination.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Development of Auditory and Spontaneous Movement Responses to Music over the First Year of Life

Humans across cultures not only share the ability to recognise music but also respond to it through movement. While the sensory encoding of music is well-studied, when and how infants naturally start moving to music is largely unexplored. This study simultaneously investigates infants neural (auditory) responses and spontaneous movements to music during the first postnatal year. Neural activity (EEG) and body kinematics (markerless pose estimation) were recorded from 79 infants (aged 3, 6, and 12 months) listening to refrains of childrens music, along with shuffled, high-pitched, and low-pitched versions of the same songs. Neural data revealed that, across all ages, infants exhibit enhanced auditory responses to music compared to shuffled music, indicating that auditory encoding of music emerges early in development. Movement data revealed a different outcome. While coarse auditory-motor coupling is present at all ages, more complex structured movement patterns emerge in response to music only by 12 months. Notably, no age group demonstrated evidence of coordinated movements to music. Additionally, enhanced auditory responses to high vs low pitch were only evident at 6 months, while infants movements were better predicted by high-pitched compared to low-pitched music at all ages. This study provides initial insights into how the developing brain gradually transforms music into spontaneous movements of increasing complexity.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Evaluation of the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of a new live-attenuated lumpy skin disease vaccine in India

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) was reported for the first time in India in 2019 and since then, it has become endemic. Since a homologous (LSD-virus based) vaccine was not available in the country, goatpox virus (GPV)-based heterologous vaccine was authorized for mass immunization against LSD in cattle. This study describes the evaluation of safety, immunogenicity and efficacy of a new live-attenuated LSD vaccine developed using an Indian field strain (LSDV/India/2019/Ranchi). The virus was attenuated by continuous passage (P=50) in Vero cells. The vaccine (50th LSDV passage in Vero cells, named as Lumpi-ProVacInd) did not induce any local or systemic reaction upon its experimental inoculation in calves (n=10). At day 30 post-vaccination (pv), the vaccinated animals were shown to develop antibody- and cell-mediated immune response and exhibited complete protection upon virulent LSDV challenge. We observed a minimum Neethling response (0.018% animals; 5 out of 26940 animals) of the vaccine in field trials among 26940 animals. There was no significant reduction in the milk yield in lactating animals (n=10108), besides there was no abortion or any other reproductive disorder in the pregnant animals (n=2889). Sero-conversion was observed in 85.18% animals in the field by day 30 pv.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2022

Penetratin inhibits α-synuclein fibrillation and improves locomotor functions in mice model of Parkinsons disease

Parkinsons disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease. The presence of lewy bodies, primarily consisting of -synuclein (-syn) aggregates is one of the common features seen in the substantia nigra region of the brain in PD patients. The disease remains incurable and only symptomatic relief is available. We screened various cell-penetrating peptides and reveal that penetratin is a potent inhibitor of -syn aggregation in-vitro, and significantly improved locomotor coordination in mice models of PD in-vivo. The peptide inhibits -syn aggregation in vitro as well as in yeast, and C.elegans models. We further made a cyclic derivative of penetratin by disulfide coupling of N- and C-terminal cysteine residues. Both penetratin and its cyclized derivative interact with -syn. NMR studies show that both linear as well as cyclic derivative interact at the acidic C-terminal tail of the protein. Similar to penetratin, its cyclic derivative inhibited -syn aggregation in the C.elegans model of Parkinsons disease, and also improved worm motility. Molecular Dynamics studies show that penetratin interacts with -synuclein and prevents its conformational transition from disordered into {beta}-sheet rich structure. The therapeutic efficacy of penetratin was further confirmed in a transgenic mice model of the disease, wherein penetratin treatment over a period of 90 days improved locomotor coordination, and halted disease progression. Overall, the present work provides a potent therapeutic agent that could be further explored in the management of PD.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Transient disruption of the inferior parietal lobule impairs the ability to attribute intention to action

Although it is well established that fronto-parietal regions are active during action observation, whether they play a causal role in the ability to infer others intentions from visual kinematics remains undetermined. In experiments reported here, we combined offline continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) with computational modeling to reveal single-trial computations in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Participants received cTBS over the left anterior IPL and the left IFG pars orbitalis, in separate sessions, before completing an intention discrimination task (discriminate intention of observed reach-to-grasp acts) or a kinematic discrimination task (discriminate peak wrist height of the same acts) unrelated to intention. We targeted intentions-sensitive regions whose fMRI-measured activity accurately discriminated intention from the same action stimuli. We found that transient disruption of activity of the left IPL, but not the IFG, impaired the observers ability to judge intention from movement kinematics. Kinematic discrimination unrelated to intention, in contrast, was largely unaffected. Computational analyses revealed that IPL cTBS did not impair the ability to see changes in movement kinematics, nor did it alter the weight given to informative versus non-informative kinematic features. Rather, it selectively impaired the ability to link variations in informative features to the correct intention. These results provide the first causal evidence that left anterior IPL maps kinematics to intentions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Transient disruption of the inferior parietal lobule impairs action mindreading

Although it is well established that fronto-parietal regions are active during action observation, whether they play a causal role in the ability to "mindread" others actions remains controversial. In experiments reported here, we combined offline continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) with computational modeling to reveal single-trial computations in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Participants received cTBS over the left IPL and IFG, in separate sessions, before completing an intention discrimination task or a kinematic discrimination task unrelated to intention. We found that transient disruption of activity of the IPL, but not the IFG, specifically impaired the observers ability to judge intention from movement kinematics. Kinematic discrimination unrelated to intention, in contrast, was largely unaffected. Computational analyses revealed that IPL cTBS did not impair the ability to see changes in movement kinematics, nor did it alter the weight given to informative versus non-informative kinematic features. Rather, it selectively impaired the ability to link variations in informative features to the correct intention. These results provide the first causal evidence that IPL maps kinematics to intentions.

neuroscience↗