Neural circuits: Halting hunger
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 740 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.156
Author: Darran Yates
Cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain of mice influence the intake of food and body weight by regulating appetite suppression. (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - November 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Darran Yates Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Sleep and memory: Rippling memories
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 739 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.154
Author: Sian Lewis
Transient, high-frequency hippocampal oscillations called sharp wave–ripples may be involved in the formation of memories that are later consolidated in the neocortex. Oscillations of ripple frequency (∼200 Hz) have been reported in the rodent neocortex during sleep but are not well understood. Here, the authors (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - November 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Neurodegenerative disease: Resisting the chop
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 739 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.153
Author: Sian Lewis
It is currently unclear which forms of the protein tau contribute to Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology, but Δtau314, which is produced following caspase 2-mediated tau cleavage, is elevated in the brains of cognitively impaired mice and humans with AD. Here, in vitro expression of (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - November 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Neural development: The river runs through it
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 739 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.152
Author: Sian Lewis
In humans, some neurons can be detected migrating after birth from the subventricular zone (SVZ) to cortical regions; however, it is not known to what extent these cells mature and become integrated into human forebrain circuits. Here, brain imaging and time-lapse confocal microscopy were used (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - November 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Neurodegenerative disease: Actin up
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 739 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.151
Author: Sian Lewis
The GGGGCC (G4C2) repeat expansion in the C9orf72 gene is a common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), but the mechanism is unknown. Using quantitative proteomics, the authors found that C9orf72 protein interacts with the actin-binding protein cofilin. Cofilin (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - November 3, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
The contribution of neuroethics to international brain research initiatives
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 18, 1 (2017).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.143
Author: Kathinka Evers
Neuroethics research can contribute a level of conceptual clarity to international brain research initiatives that is essential for their ethics management as well as for the interpretations, applications and management of their emerging neuroscientific findings. (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 26, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kathinka Evers Tags: Comment Source Type: research
Addiction: Under a stressful influence
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 741 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.149
Author: Natasha Bray
In rats, stress promotes alcohol use by altering chloride gradients across the membranes of GABAergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area. (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 26, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Natasha Bray Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
The mirror mechanism: a basic principle of brain function
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 757 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.135
Authors: Giacomo Rizzolatti & Corrado Sinigaglia
The mirror mechanism is a basic brain mechanism that transforms sensory representations of others' behaviour into one's own motor or visceromotor representations concerning that behaviour. According to its location in the brain, it may fulfil a range of cognitive functions, including action and emotion understanding. (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 19, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Giacomo Rizzolatti Corrado Sinigaglia Tags: Review Source Type: research
Synaptic plasticity: Spinal signals
This study suggests that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is released from dendritic spines in response to activity and acts in an autocrine manner to mediate structural plasticity of the spine from which it was released. (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 19, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Katherine Whalley Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Lasting impact of general anaesthesia on the brain: mechanisms and relevance
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 705 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.128
Authors: Laszlo Vutskits & Zhongcong Xie
General anaesthesia is usually considered to safely induce a reversible brain state allowing the performance of surgery under optimal conditions. An increasing number of clinical and experimental observations, however, suggest that anaesthetic drugs, especially when they are administered at the extremes of age, can trigger (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Laszlo Vutskits Zhongcong Xie Tags: Review Source Type: research
Circuit modules linking internal states and social behaviour in flies and mice
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 692 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.125
Author: David J. Anderson
Goal-directed social behaviours such as mating and fighting are associated with scalable and persistent internal states of emotion, motivation, arousal or drive. How those internal states are encoded and coupled to behavioural decision making and action selection is not clear. Recent studies in Drosophila melanogaster (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: David J. Anderson Tags: Review Source Type: research
Neuroimmunology: Waking the immune system
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 671 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.147
Author: Sian Lewis
Recent evidence suggests that narcolepsy, a disorder that results from the loss of orexinergic neurons of the lateral hypothalamus, has an autoimmune aetiology, but the underlying mechanisms have not been elucidated. Here, haemagglutinin (which acted as an artificial 'self-antigen') was selectively expressed in mouse hypothalamic (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Synaptic plasticity: TARP target
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 671 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.146
Author: Sian Lewis
Long-term potentiation (LTP) at excitatory hippocampal synapses involves the postsynaptic insertion of AMPA receptors triggered by calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase type II (CaMKII)-mediated protein phosphorylation, but the CaMKII substrate remains unclear. Here, mice expressing a mutant form of auxiliary transmembrane AMPA receptor regulatory protein γ8 (TARP (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Neurogenetics: Accelerating towards mental illness
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 671 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.145
Author: Sian Lewis
The human genome contains conserved loci that show accelerated divergence from other species — called human accelerated regions (HARs) — but the effect of mutations in these regions on brain function is poorly understood. Doan et al. found that the levels of two types (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
Neuronal development: Forcing axon pathfinding
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, 671 (2016).
doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.144
Author: Sian Lewis
Developing axons grow through brain tissue to reach their targets — a process termed pathfinding. The regulation of this process involves chemical cues, but it is not known whether the mechanical forces encountered by the axon as it grows through brain tissues also play a (Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Source: Nature Reviews Neuroscience - October 17, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Sian Lewis Tags: Research Highlight Source Type: research
