Nature Neuroscience - Current issue : October 2008 - Vol 11 No 10
- Functions for adult neurogenesis
- Associative learning without STDP
- Neural correlates of multisensory cue integration
Advance online publication
Snap Decisions
Brief communication by Yang and colleaguesAuditory cortex neurons fire with high temporal precision to the fine timing of acoustic stimuli. Here, Yang et al. show that stimulations of this area in rat brains, even when differing by as little as three milliseconds, can be used to guide decisions.
Advance online publication
ISl-1 in sensory neurons
Article by Sun and colleaguesThe transcription factor Isl-1 is essential for motor neuron development, but its role in sensory development is unclear. Using conditional knockout limited to neural crest derivatives, this study shows that Isl-1 is necessary for the survival of nociceptive and mechanoreceptive neurons during later embryogenesis.
Advance online publication
Genes and schizophrenia
Article by Mukai and colleaguesMicrodeletions of the chromosome locus 22q11.2 are linked to schizophrenia. In transgenic mice that carry a similar microdeletion, Mukai et al. show dendritic spine defects in hippocampal neurons. They also associate these changes with the loss of a neuronal palmitoyltransferase that is encoded in this locus.
Announcement
Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Neurological Disease
December 5, 2008Mitochondria are responsible for maintaining the energy balance of the cell and are also responsible for triggering apoptosis (programmed cell death) in response to oxidative stress. This one-day mini-symposium aims to highlight recent advances in our understanding of how these organelles function in the nervous system, and how mitochondrial dysfunction.