Articles in 2011

Laminin-332 is a major component of the dermo-epidermal skin basement membrane and maintains skin integrity. Here the authors find that it also suppresses a mechanosensitive current by preventing the formation of protein tethers required for current activation and exerts local control of over sensory axon branching behavior.

The authors use transgenic mice to show that zinc modulates NMDA receptors containing the NR2A subunit, and that this interaction influences pain control in vivo.

In addition to neurotoxic Aβ42, the Aβ43 variant is also abundant in Aβ plaques in the brains of individuals with sporadic and familial Alzheimer's disease. As the functional difference between the two species of Aβ fragments are not known, Saido et al. used a presenilin-1 (PS1) mutation that increases Aβ43 production over other Aβ fragments and generated a knock-in mouse line mimicking the human PS1 mutation. They report that Aβ43 is highly amyloidogenic in this line of mice and leads to behavioral deficits.

Owls accurately localize sound sources near the center of gaze, but systematically underestimate peripheral source directions. Here the authors demonstrate that this behavior is predicted by statistical inference and show that the owl's map of auditory space decoded by a population vector is consistent with the behavioral model.

This study reports that CaMKIIβ is recruited to the centrosome by PCM1, where it promotes dendrite retraction and pruning via the phosphorylation and inhibition of Cdc20-APC. This effect is independent of its association with CaMKIIα.

The human capacity for language is unique, but other animals may have abilities in some of the domains that are required for processing language. Abe and Watanabe find that songbirds have the capacity to learn an artificial grammar and to process hierarchical structures, an ability thought to be unique to humans.

C. elegans uses a thermotactic neural circuit to sense, move and remember temperature gradients in its surroundings. Here, Sugi and colleagues show that these responses are regulated by the heat-shock transcription factor HSF-1 and subsequent transcriptional programming in both neuronal and non-neuronal cells.

Premyelinating oligodendrocytes are vulnerable to hypoxic injuries, especially during the neonatal period. Here, Fancy et al. find that the Wnt scaffolding molecule Axin2 is crucial for normal remyelination after hypoxic injuries and demonstrate that pharmacological inhibition of tankyrase, which stabilizes Axin2 levels, can promote oligodendrocyte differentiation and recovery after hypoxic and demyelinating injuries.

Adding to previous findings on Drosophila pheromone cVA and its receptor Or65a in regulating male-male aggression, this study finds that prior activation Or65a-positive olfactory receptor neurons before encountering other male flies is needed to mitigate social aggression.

This study reports an anatomical and functional screen of mushroom body–extrinsic neurons in Drosophila and finds that MB-V2 cholinergic efferent neurons are essential for retrieval of aversive short- and long-term memory, but not for memory formation or consolidation. During memory retrieval, MB-V2 neurons reinforce the olfactory pathway involved in innate odor avoidance.

This study characterizes a subset of clock neurons known as large lateral-ventral neurons and their dopaminergic/octopaminergic input circuitry in balancing light-mediated wakefulness in Drosophila.

Huang and Trussell show that resting potential of the calyx of Held synapse is controlled by KCNQ5 potassium channels. Unlike most KCNQ channels, which activate only on depolarization, these presynaptic channels activate negative to the resting potential. These channels set the resting conductance and control release probability of the synapse.

Because clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is relatively slow, it's been suggested that a readily retrievable pool of synaptic vesicle proteins might support fast CME. The authors use a recently developed probe to monitor synaptic vesicle recycling and demonstrate the preferential recruitment of a surface pool of synaptic vesicle proteins upon stimulated endocytosis.

Striatal spiny neurons (SPNs) transition from a hyperpolarized 'down state' to a sustained depolarized 'up state' to regulate action selection. The authors report that glutamate uncaging on proximal dendritic spines of SPNs evokes somatic up states that track the input time course. However, glutamate uncaging on distal spines evokes up states that last hundreds of milliseconds.

The authors report that TACE, the tumor necrosis factor-α–converting enzyme, regulates PNS myelination by affecting neuregulin-1 type III activity. Mice lacking TACE in motor neurons show hypermyelination.

The authors record from primate dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) during a foraging task. They find that dACC neuronal responses were correlated with behavioral decisions about when to leave a depleting resource to exploit another.

Orientation judgments are more accurate at the horizontal and vertical orientations, possibly reflecting a statistical inference. Here the authors provide evidence for this idea, finding that observers' internal models for orientation match the local orientation distribution measured in photographs, and suggest how such information could be encoded in a neural population.

UNC119 is a protein localized to the non-motile primary cilia. Here, Zhang et al. report the crystal structure of UNC119 and provide biochemical and cellular evidence that UNC119 is a lipid-binding protein that mediates G protein trafficking. The authors also show that that UNC119 function is conserved from GPCR trafficking in C. elegans olfactory neuron to transducin trafficking in mammalian photoreceptors.

The authors report that insulin activates PI3K signaling in SF-1–expressing neurons of the ventromedial hypothalamus to regulate their firing frequency. Mice with insulin receptor deficiency in these neurons show protection from the metabolic effects of exposure to high-fat diet.

Of the three major types of ionotropic glutamate receptors, synaptic kainite receptors have slow channel kinetics. This study characterizes Neto1, a novel auxiliary subunit of kainite receptor that directly modulates ligand binding and slow kinetics of kainite receptors.