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Astrocytes in the mouse CNS migrate radially from their points of origin within the ventricular zone to restricted spatial domains throughout the brain and spinal cord, with implications for localized astrocyte functions.
Fruitless recruits two antagonistic chromatin modifying proteins to control the development of sexually dimorphic circuitry and behaviour in fruitflies.
Wallerian degeneration of severed axons is suppressed by the loss ofdSarm/Sarm1function, indicating the existence of an injury-induced axon death pathway.
A new technique to temporarily and selectively inactivate spinal interneurons reveals that spinal interneurons are crucial for reach and grasp movements.
Recent studies show that oestradiol, the classic female oestrogen, can be locally synthesized by central auditory neurons to rapidly modulate neuronal physiology and auditory-based behaviours in both sexes. Pinaud and Tremere review these findings, which indicate that oestradiol is an important, novel modulator of hearing function.
The recent characterization of non-coding RNAs and their astonishingly diverse functions has led to a radical shift in our understanding of how the genome influences neuronal function. In this Review, Qureshi and Mehler describe the numerous classes of non-coding RNAs and how they might contribute to neuronal physiology and disease.
The α2δ and β subunits of voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) modulate the biophysical properties and trafficking of such channels. In this Review, Annette Dolphin examines the traditional roles of these auxillary subunits and their involvement in neuronal processes that are not linked to VGCC function.
Bodily self-consciousness includes the conscious experience of identifying with the body, of where 'I' am in space, and of the perspective from where 'I' perceive the world. Olaf Blanke discusses the cortical mechanisms that underlie these experiences, highlighting data from neuroimaging, neurology and virtual reality.
Decision making is influenced by uncertainty, which arises from internal and external noise. A fundamental question is how uncertainty is encoded in the brain and how it influences behaviour. In this Review, Bach and Dolan integrate several theoretical concepts about uncertainty into a hierarchical decision-making framework.
Neurons in the human medial temporal lobe respond in a selective and abstract manner to particular persons or objects. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga argues that these 'concept cells' are crucial for memory functions and the transition between related concepts that leads to the flow of consciousness.
