Volume 7 Issue 11, November 2004

The perception of a stimulus can result in an emotional response, as we all know, but modulation of perception by emotion has been more difficult to demonstrate. A new study combines imaging and patient data to point to an anatomical substrate for such an effect, raising important implications regarding how sensory-processing impairments might arise in affective disorders.

Newborn neurons in the cerebellum migrate along radial glial processes through a series of distinct steps. A report in this issue uses live imaging to grant us a close-up view of the cytoskeletal structures and regulating proteins involved in this migration.

In humans, recollection and familiarity represent qualitatively distinct kinds of memory. A recent study in Nature applied methods commonly used in human research to rats and suggests that their recognition memory may consist of similarly distinct components.

The rostral cingulate zone and the orbitofrontal cortex are active when people monitor the consequences of adaptively changing behavior. A new fMRI study distinguishes their functions, implicating them in situations with different contexts and timing.