Volume 9 Issue 11, November 2006

How do neurons combine separate pieces of information that are only partially reliable? Surprisingly, their noise properties may simplify the underlying computations while allowing them to maintain optimal performance.

An inhibitor of glycolysis is shown to have antiepileptic effects in the rat kindling model, possibly through NADH-dependent regulation of gene expression. This may explain how the 'ketogenic diet' treatment works.

Glutamate transporters have long been thought to help terminate the synaptic response through neurotransmitter binding and reuptake, but a new report in this issue identifies a role for their anionic current in information transmission in the retina.

Most early-onset familial Alzheimer disease is caused by presenilin mutations. A recent paper reports that the presenilins act as calcium leak channels in the endoplasmic reticulum and thus may regulate intracellular calcium homeostasis.

Multiple local motions must be combined to determine the direction of object motion, which is harder than it seems. A new paper proposes an elegant and simple solution to this problem, eminently realizable in feed-forward circuits.