Volume 13 Issue 9, September 2012

The dorsal premotor cortex encodes both target direction and movement direction during a complex reaching task.

Oligodendrocytes use a lactate transporter to provide metabolic support to axons and neurons.

There are currently no known mutations in the amyloid-β precursor protein gene that reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Jonssonet al. now provide evidence for a mutation that protects against Alzheimer's disease and also confers a more general resistance against age-related cognitive decline.

Protein-rich diets reduce food intake by activating gut–brain pathways through μ-opioid receptors in the portal vein. This activation promotes gluconeogenesis in the gut, which acts as a satiety signal.

MIF mediates the antidepressant effects of voluntary exercise by increasing hippocampalBdnftranscription and serotonin synthesis.

Swimming tadpoles use motor feedforward signals without sensory feedback to produce eye movements that stabilize their gaze.

The semaphorins have integral roles in various processes that underlie the development of neural circuits. In this article, Jeroen Pasterkamp explores novel aspects of neuronal semaphorin receptor regulation before discussing recent research into the involvement of semaphorins in establishing complex neuronal connections.

In this Review, De Zeeuw and colleagues discuss the types of plasticity that occur at different synapses within the cerebellar cortex. They propose that the distributed and synergistic character of the various forms of plasticity promotes optimal motor learning.

Crone and Dahl review functional imaging studies of cognitive, affective and social processing in adolescents. They suggest that, together with the development of cognitive control networks, changes in social and affective processing in adolescence may both confer adaptive advantages and induce vulnerability to risky behaviours.

It is commonly thought that fear induced by distinct stimuli is processed by a single 'fear circuit'. Gross and Canteras discuss evidence showing that separate, parallel pathways process different types of innate fear but a common mechanism underlies the encoding of learned fear for all classes of stimuli.

Improvement in the performance of a newly acquired skill with training occurs gradually over time. Here, Censor, Sagi and Cohen highlight similarities in such procedural learning between the motor and perceptual domains and suggest that a common mechanism supports this type of learning in various domains.