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The nuclei of radial glia divide and complete mitosis at the apical surface of the embryonic brain. They then migrate to the basal surface and back before dividing again. This study shows that these nuclei travel along microtubules, driven by KIF1A in the basal direction and by dynein in the apical direction.
A screen for mutations depressing AMPA receptor expression in C. elegans revealed a gene encoding a putative RNA binding protein, dubbed GRLD-1. Wang et al. find that GRLD-1 acts on the glr-1 introns to boost expression and speculate that it may excise a destabilizing intron.
Using optogenetic tools, Carter et al. find a frequency-dependent causal relationship between locus coeruleus firing, sleep-to-wake transitions and locomotor arousal in mice.
The established conductance hierarchy of voltage-gated calcium channels, where conductance of CaV1 is greater than CaV2, which is in turn greater than CaV3, was determined using nonphysiological divalent ion concentrations. Weber et al. find that CaV2.2 conductance is greater than that of CaV1 and CaV3 and investigate implications for Ca2+ nanodomain signaling.
Rouaux and Arlotta show that expression of a single transcription factor, Fezf2, suffices to turn ventral forebrain progenitors committed to a striatal GABAergic fate into glutamatergic corticofugal projection neurons—which nevertheless migrate to the striatum.
Primary auditory cortex is organized tonotopically along one axis. Using laser scanning photostimulation in acute slices, the authors find that local connections along the tonotopic axis differ from those along the orthogonal, isofrequency axis.
Using optogenetic techniques, Dhawale et al. find that, although sister mitral cells (which receive input from the same olfactory glomerulus) have highly correlated average spike rate responses, their spike timing with respect to respiration differs. This suggests that sister cells carry both correlated and independent information.
Could similar changes in SOD1 underlie both familial and sporadic ALS? Here, Bosco et al. find that wild-type SOD1 from sporadic ALS tissues shows conformational changes similar to those seen in familial ALS and that aberrant wild-type SOD1 can be pathogenic, potentially as a result of the same SOD1-dependent mechanism seen in familial ALS.
Agetsuma and colleagues find that the pathway between the lateral subnucleus of the dorsal habenula (dHbL) and the interpeduncular nucleus is involved in mediating experience-dependent fear responses in zebrafish. Genetic inactivation of the dHbL biased fish towards freezing, rather than the typical flight behavior, in response to a conditioned fear stimulus.
Lomber and colleagues find that enhanced visual localization and motion detection in deaf cats is subserved by cross-modal reorganization of cortex that is typically dedicated to auditory function. Furthermore, the authors localize the individual visual functions to discrete portions of reorganized auditory cortex.
How extracellular signals, such as BDNF, regulate axonal branching is unclear. Here, Jeanneteau et al. find that MAP kinase phosphatase 1 expression is induced by BDNF signaling to deactivate JNK. This negatively regulates phosphorylation of JNK substrates that impinge on microtubule destabilization. Neurons from mkp-1 null mice were unable to produce BDNF-induced axon branches.
This study demonstrates that Fbw7, a component of ubiquitin ligase complex, regulates neural progenitor cell viability and differentiation by controlling Notch and JNK/c-Jun signaling.
Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is manifested as motor dysfunction stemming from axonal degeneration. Of the known 19 spastic paraplegia genes (SPGs), SPG3a encodes a multimeric integral membrane protein Atlastin. Here, the authors use zebrafish system to demonstrate the interplay between Atlastin and bone morphogenic protein signaling in motor axon development and stability.
Integrins connect cells to the extracellular matrix and mediate neuron-neuron or neuron-glia interactions during synapse maturation and synaptic plasticity. Here, Charrier et al. find that integrins β1 and β3 exert opposing actions via CaMKII to regulate glycine receptor lateral diffusion and gephyrin trafficking at the inhibitory synapses in spinal cord neurons.
Corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) and its receptors are involved in the neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to stress. Here, Elliot and colleagues describe alterations in DNA methylation of the Crf gene that regulate its expression and show that these alterations correlate with resilience to social stress.
A continuum of acoustically varying speech sounds is not perceived as a continuum, but as distinct phonetic categories. Chang et al. recorded directly from human posterior superior temporal gyrus and found that this area has a similarly discontinuous coding of objectively continuous sound, matching perception and indicating higher-level processing.
Dombeck and colleagues describe a method for two-photon calcium imaging using a genetically encoded indicator in the hippocampus of awake, behaving mice. This powerful approach permits the recording of multiple hippocampal place cells' activity with subcellular resolution as the mice run on a track in a virtual reality environment.
For young glia to migrate along motor axons in the developing fly, their adhesion to the axon must be broken. Silies and Klämbt show that this is accomplished by removal of Fas2 from the axonal membrane, involving a ubiquitin ligase complex that has previously been implicated only in cell cycle regulation.
Scott and colleagues show that expression of the transcription factor Sox9 is closely correlated with the transition from neuroepithelial cell to neural stem cell (NSC) during embryogenesis. Expression of Sox9 in early neuroepithelium elicited premature generation of NSCs. In the adult brain, Sox9 was necessary for the maintenance of NSCs and ependymal cells.
This study finds that the normal development of GABAergic feedforward inhibition in mouse layer 4 barrel cortex is disrupted by whisker trimming. Such sensory deprivation results in a weakened thalomocortical to feedforward interneuron connections and a lack of the normal reduction of the NMDA component of the thalamocortical input to excitatory cells, both of which are important for feedforward GABAergic inhibition.