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There is greater 'overlap' between the sets of CA1 neurons encoding temporally close memories than of neurons encoding memories temporally spaced apart; such overlap may enable linking of temporally close memories.
Research on the neural substrates of drug addiction has yet to be translated into a treatment of addiction. Heiliget al. propose that finding neural links between social factors, such as exclusion, and drug addiction would help to make addiction neuroscience research more clinically relevant.
Central and peripheral inflammation can be induced by psychological stress and is associated with depressive symptoms, suggesting a possible role for immune dysfunction in depression. Duman and colleagues examine the neuroimmune mechanisms influencing neuronal–microglial interactions, neuronal activity and synaptic plasticity in stress and depression.
In experimental autoimmune encephalitis (a mouse model of multiple sclerosis), type I interferons stimulate the production of aryl hydrocarbon receptor, which is activated by diet- and microbe-derived molecules and limits CNS inflammation.
The dopamine system has been implicated in a number of psychiatric disorders, including depression and schizophrenia. Here, Grace describes evidence for disrupted afferent regulation of dopamine neuron firing in these disorders and considers the role of stress in driving this pathology.
Recent studies have attributed surprisingly similar functional roles to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and hippocampus. Evidence is presented that both the OFC and hippocampus contribute to 'cognitive mapping', and it is suggested that future work should focus on understanding the functional interactions between these structures.
Whether autophagy — an intracellular degradation pathway — contributes to or protects against damage following different types of acute brain injury is unclear. Here, Kroemer and colleagues review investigations into the effects of autophagy in excitotoxicity, acute exposure to neurotoxins, neonatal asphyxia, stroke and neurotrauma.
Slow gamma oscillations during sharp-wave ripples in hippocampus are reduced in mice expressing human APOE4 and this is associated with age-related deficits in learning and memory.
Somatostatin-expressing neurons represent a major class of inhibitory interneurons in the hippocampus and neocortex. Urban-Ciecko and Barth examine recent studies into the functions of these neurons, and their effects on surrounding cells and network activity in health and disease.
Uncovering the neural basis of consciousness is a major challenge to neuroscience. In this Perspective, Tononi and colleagues describe the integrated information theory of consciousness and how it might be used to answer outstanding questions about the nature of consciousness.
Working memory (WM) — the ability to maintain and manipulate information over a period of seconds — is a key cognitive skill. Constantinidis and Klingberg discuss non-human-primate, computational-modelling and human-neuroimaging studies that examine the neural bases of WM and training-induced enhancements of WM capacity.
A miniaturized spinning bioreactor is used to generate cerebral organoids that mimic key aspects of human cortical development and that can be used to investigate the effects of Zika virus infection on neural development.
Cultures of human neural cells can be generated from skin cells that have been reprogrammed to produce induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) or subjected to direct conversion. Gage and colleagues describe advances in differentiation protocols that allow specific subtypes of neural cell to be produced and consider the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches.
