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In a new study, Denget al. use an elegant technique to clarify how the dentate gyrus distinguishes among similar memories by activating distinct populations of granule cells.
Negative regulator of ubiquitin-like protein 1 (NUB1) regulates the clearance of mutant huntingtin and could represent a new entry point for therapeutics for Huntington's disease.
In the primary visual cortex in mice, stimulus feature-selective neocortical microcircuits exist before eye opening, but preferential local connectivity between neurons responding to similar stimulus features does not develop until the onset of vision.
One of the roles of astrocytes in the brain is to regulate the formation, maturation, function and elimination of synapses and thereby to support the formation of appropriate neural circuits. Clarke and Barres review our current understanding of these vital processes and highlight unanswered questions for future research.
Inter-individual differences in the thickness or volume of a brain region often co-vary with inter-individual differences in other brain regions. Alexander-Bloch, Giedd and Bullmore discuss this phenomenon of structural co-variance, its underlying mechanisms and its potential value in the understanding of various brain disorders.
Many findings in recent years have shed light on the process of epileptogenesis, whereby the brain becomes predisposed to seizures, but this process is still not well understood. Goldberg and Coulter review several important themes in this research and conclude that they point towards a circuit-level explanation of epileptogenesis.
Vision is an active process. Higher-order cognitive influences, including attention, expectation and perceptual task, as well as motor signals, are fed into the sensory apparatus. This enables neurons to dynamically tune their receptive field properties to carry information that is relevant for executing the current behavioural tasks.
Low-powered studies lead to overestimates of effect size and low reproducibility of results. In this Analysis article, Munafò and colleagues show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low, discuss ethical implications of low-powered studies and provide recommendations to improve research practices.
