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During cocaine withdrawal, a shift in the balance between excitatory and inhibitory inputs from globus pallidus to lateral habenula may activate habenula and contribute to the aversive 'crash' state.
Injured mouse retinal ganglion cells, upon a combination of treatments, can regrow their axons along the entire optic pathway and re-establish connections with their correct brain targets. This can partially restore function.
Orientation selectivity in visual cortex is not simply the result of linear input summation. Instead, selectivity is enhanced by nonlinear dendritic transformation of spatially clustered, cotuned synaptic inputs.
Early nicotine exposure during brain development may cause long-lasting neurobiological and behavioral alterations in adulthood. Jung et al. present insights into the mechanisms mediating these developmental changes.
During a binary choice task, neuronal activity in monkey orbitofrontal cortex alternated between two network states. The internal dynamics revealed by a linear decoder correlated with the reaction time and with the eventual choice.
Researchers show that orbitofrontal neurons perform the same value-related computations across different decisions. Value computations are therefore a critical feature around which orbitofrontal representations are organized.
Our understanding of faces reflects both our perception of their facial features and our social knowledge. This interaction of stereotypes and vision can be observed in brain signals in fusiform gyrus and orbitofrontal cortex.
The brain cancer glioblastoma relies on aberrant epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFRvIII) signaling for tumorigenesis. An essential co-receptor and feed-forward circuit maintain signaling in this deadly disease.
In high-throughput electron microscopy, a simple method to reduce artifacts helps reveal the architecture of circuits in the developing zebrafish olfactory bulb.
Hypothalamic Agouti-related peptide (AgRP)-expressing neurons promote feeding via inhibitory mechanisms. A downstream target in the medial amygdala both mediates feeding and modulates risk-taking and defensive behaviors in the face of starvation.
Connectivity patterns of neocortex exhibit several odd properties: for example, most neighboring excitatory neurons do not connect, which seems curiously wasteful. Brunel's elegant theoretical treatment reveals how optimal information storage can naturally impose these peculiar properties.
A study reports mutations in a histone methyltransferase gene, SETD1A, in schizophrenia patients and demonstrates that tens of thousands of people must be screened to provide robust evidence of a gene's involvement in schizophrenia.
Inhibitory optogenetic tools prevent action potential generation during illumination. A study explores the possibility of squelching already propagating action potentials locally at axon terminals before they trigger neurotransmitter release.
Master circadian clocks in discrete neurons trigger profound daily changes in brain states, such as sleep and wake states. A study now finds a circuit through which these pacemakers act to control daily behavioral rhythms in Drosophila.
Refinement of genetic variants within the major histocompatibility complex reveals three distinct genetic influences on schizophrenia risk and sheds light on the disease's neurobiology.
A clinical trial inspired and guided by optogenetics experiments in rodents reports the outcome of targeted transcranial magnetic stimulation in patients suffering from cocaine addiction.
In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Eshel et al. characterize the homogeneity with which individual dopamine neurons encode reward prediction error, a teaching signal that is thought to be crucial for associative learning.
