Volume 7 Issue 4, April 2004

In many competitive games, players need to behave unpredictably so that their opponents cannot anticipate the next move. New recordings from monkeys playing a computer game support the idea that neurons in the prefrontal cortex may control this behavior and imply there is a cost for generating random behavior, which monkeys avoid unless the opponent is sophisticated.

A new study demonstrates that small synaptic vesicles exocytose dopamine through a flickering fusion pore almost exclusively, a process known as 'kiss-and-run' exocytosis. This process is driven by the need for efficient use of few synaptic vesicles.

Individual olfactory sensory neurons express only one of more than a thousand different odorant receptors, suggesting that DNA rearrangement may be involved. Based on a clever new technical approach, two groups now conclude that this is not the case.

Men tend to be more interested than women in visual sexually arousing stimuli. Now we learn that when they view identical stimuli, even when women report greater arousal, the amydala and hypothalamus are much more strongly activated in men.