Review Articles in 2014

The amygdala is known to play an important role in fear conditioning. In this Review, the authors discuss extended circuits beyond the amygdala mediating fear learning and expression, focusing on the neural coding mechanisms underlying these behaviors.

In this Review, Lüscher and Lüthi draw some parallels between anxiety and addiction disorders as diseases of the brain's emotional valence system. The authors present an update on the anatomy and heterogeneity of the fear and reward circuitries, analyze our understanding of the synaptic and cellular mechanisms thought to underlie the two conditions and discuss recent studies causally linking the resulting circuit dysfunctions and alterations in behavior.

This article reviews various next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and how they may be applied to the studies of the central nervous system. Specifically, the authors summarize practical information about when and how NGS may be applied to the studies of brain function, highlighting pros and cons of each technique for the unique challenges of studying a mixed population of targets.

In this review, the authors discuss the applications of epigenomics approaches to studies of the CNS and critique the tools available to analyze neuroepigenomics data. They also assess the challenges of integrating these data with that of other approaches, such as transcriptomics, proteomics and behavior.

Neuroimagers have collected large datasets and many of these are now available online. In this review the authors discuss the current state of sharing task-based fMRI data and the many challenges it poses.

A full understanding of the biology and function of the numerous cell types that comprise the nervous system requires analysis of their transcriptional and translational profiles. In this Review article, the authors discuss the methods for overcoming the challenges that accompany the collection of large proteomic datasets and their integration with other data modalities.

Navratilova and Porreca discuss recent advances in our understanding of brain mechanisms of pain in animal models and humans, focusing on the role of the meso-corticolimbic system in processing pain and pain relief. The authors also present their views on how such knowledge can be leveraged to generate new therapies.

In this review, the authors discuss the role of the lateral habenula in processing reward, both in the healthy brain and in models of depression, drawing on work in non-human primates and rodents.

Many recent studies have adopted dimensionality reduction to analyze neural population activity and to find features that are not apparent at the level of individual neurons. The authors describe the scientific motivation for population analyses and the dimensionality reduction methods commonly applied to population activity. They also offer practical advice about selecting methods and interpreting their outputs.

The authors review studies of basal ganglia (BG) physiology in the context of the indirect/direct pathway model of the BG. Noting work that is inconsistent with an exclusive role of the direct pathway in promoting movement and indirect pathway inhibiting movement, they propose a revision of the model incorporating recent findings.

In this paper, Womelsdorf and colleagues review the recent advances in our understanding of how rhythmic activity across multiple frequency bands and brain areas affects neural computations. The authors suggest a dynamic tripartite motif framework that links the activity signatures of given circuits with their structural elements and the proposed computational output.

This Review discusses the molecular mechanisms by which neuronal identity is maintained throughout animals' development and lives. Drawing from the invertebrate and vertebrate literature, Deneris and Hobert also describe common themes, where the initial specification of neurons and subsequent maintenance of cell identity may share transcriptional programming and transcription factors. The piece also discusses such mechanism's implications for neurological diseases.

It is now possible to systematically identify, on a genome-wide scale, genetic variants for disease, how often they occur in the population and how large their impact is on risk. In this Review, the authors discuss recent findings regarding the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders and the contribution of common but weak and rare but strong variants to disease risk.

Understanding how genetic variation contributes to normal and pathological brain function requires integrating genetic and neuroimaging studies. New imaging consortia now make it possible to systematically assess the impact of genetic variation on the structure and function of the brain on a whole-genome and whole-brain level. In this Review, the authors summarize efforts to combine genome-wide studies with brain imaging and discuss the statistical and methodological issues necessary to insure rigor and robustness in this rapidly developing field.

Advances in genome sequencing technologies have revolutionized the search for rare and penetrant mutations leading to diseases such as autism. Given that all individuals carry new and disruptive mutations, in this Review, the authors discuss ways to home in on pathogenic mutations associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Mutations in Mendelian disease genes often lead to distinct clinical presentations, and the same non-specific risk is now apparent for many neuropsychiatric disorders. In this Review, the authors analyze pathogenic mechanisms for known Mendelian disease and discuss what it means for understanding the causes of non-specific genetic risk in more complex brain diseases.

The author reviews network models of the brain, including models of both structural and functional connectivity. He discusses contributions of network models to cognitive neuroscience, as well as limitations and challenges associated with constructing and interpreting these models.

It has been argued that the fundamental bridge from basic research to education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. Here the authors argue that brain science has much to offer education, discussing specific cases in which neuroscience has broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice.

Working memory is thought to be limited in capacity, holding a fixed, small number of items, but it has recently been proposed that working memory might be conceptualized as a limited resource that is distributed flexibly between all items to be maintained in memory. In this review, the authors consider emerging evidence for this proposal.

There is growing evidence for the existence of cross-talk between somatosensory labeled lines during the processing of noxious information, lending support to the notion that the nociceptive system operates under combinatorial encoding rules. In this Review, Prescott, Ma and De Koninck present an update on a controversy that is probably as old as the field of somatosensation itself and propose that the next step forward in our understanding of pain will necessarily involve the meticulous dissection of spinal dorsal horn microcircuitry.