Nature Neuroscience - Current issue : November 2009 - Vol 12 No 11
- GPR17 regulation of myelination
- Amyloid plaques in the absence of microglia
- Nucleus basalis and coding of natural scenes
Advance online publication
Pyramidal neurons self-regulate via endocannabinoids
Brief Communication by Marinelli and colleaguesThis study finds that excitatory neurons in cortical layer 2/3 can respond to their own firing with persistent hyperpolarization termed slow self-inhibition or SSI. This process is mediated by endocannabinoids and regulates neuronal excitability.
Advance online publication
Speeding up synaptogenesis
Brief Communication by Xu and colleaguesThis study reports that the glycoprotein thrombospondin 1, hastens synapse formation in cultured rat hippocampal neurons via interaction with neuroligin 1.
Advance online publication
Experience-dependent dendritic plasticity
Brief Communication by Makara and colleaguesDendritic excitability is a plastic property of neurons. This study shows that exposure to an enriched environment increases propagation of dendritic sodium spikes in a subset of dendritic branches in CA1 pyramidal neurons. This effect is mediated by localized down-regulation of A-type potassium channel function.
Advance online publication
Costs and benefits
Brief Communication by Gan and colleaguesCue evoked activity of midbrain dopamine neurons is proposed to encode the magnitude, delay and uncertainty of predicted rewards. Here the authors report that this activity separates costs and benefits, as it does not encode the costs of the action required to obtain predicted rewards.
Advance online publication
Attention reduces interneuron correlation
Article by Cohen and MaunsellPrevious work suggested that visual attention improved behavioral performance by increasing firing rates of individual sensory neurons. Recording from populations of neurons in monkey visual area V4, these authors find most of the attentional improvement in the population signal results from decreases in interneuronal correlations.
Advance online publication
NMDA receptor loss leads to schizophrenia-like behavior
Article by Belforte and colleaguesThe authors generated mice lacking the NR1 subunit of the NMDA receptor selectively in cortical and hippocampal interneurons to test the hypothesis that glutamatergic dysfunction can cause pathophysiology similar to schizophrenia. These mice develop several psychotic symptoms.
Advance online publication
Targeting instructions in the olfactory map
Article by Hong and colleaguesIn Drosophila, the connections between olfactory receptor neurons and projection neurons are highly specific. Here, the authors report that two leucine-rich repeat transmembrane proteins, Capricious and Tartan, serve as a mechanism for projection neuron dendrite targeting in the olfactory map.
Advance online publication
Cleaning up during development
Article by Wu and colleaguesDuring development of the peripheral ganglia, 50% of neurons die by apoptosis. This paper shows that satellite glial cell precursors clear these neuronal corpses in developing DRG and identifies some of the molecular players involved in this phagocytosis.
