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Herman et al. exploit the reliable effects of perturbing superior colliculus (SC) neuronal activity on perceptual choice behavior to demonstrate a plausible mechanism by which SC may contribute to perceptual judgments during covert attention tasks.
Using genetic tools of neural circuit tracing and manipulation, we identify a novel projection from the amygdala to the zona incerta—a nucleus not previously implicated in fear memory—that is essential for recent and remote fear memories.
Whether MeCP2 competes with linker histone H1 for DNA binding has never been tested in vivo. Ito-Ishida et al. performed ChIP-seq on MeCP2 and Flag-H1.0 in mouse forebrain neurons and reveal that their genomic distributions are largely independent.
mTORC1 was posited as required for hippocampal mGluR-LTD at CA1 synapses based on its pharmacological inhibition with rapamycin. Using molecular genetics, the authors show that mTORC2 but not mTORC1 is required for mGluR-LTD and associated behaviors.
The neuropeptide CRH is believed to induce aversive, stress-like behavioral responses. Here the authors describe a distinct population of CRH neurons in the extended amygdala that act to suppress anxiety by positively modulating dopamine release.
Wittig et al. show that attention in the service of verbal memory triggers a preparatory suppression of neural activity in the human anterior temporal lobe, suggesting that this region is a novel and unexpected source of attentional control.
Prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) mPFC are thought to mediate fear expression and fear extinction, respectively. The authors show that PL projects to IL and innervates projections to amygdala and that this connection is engaged in fear extinction.
Whether we currently pay attention to memory items matters for their neural representation. Unattended items are stored exclusively in activity of higher-level brain areas, whereas attended items are also represented in low-level sensory regions.
The authors show that Mrgprs, vagal sensory neuron-expressing GPCRs, mediate bronchoconstriction and hyperresponsiveness, both of which are hallmark features of asthma. The results reveal novel potential neural mechanisms underlying asthma.
fMRI activity in human entorhinal cortex is modulated by eye-movement direction with 60° periodicity, implicating a grid cell-like code in mapping visual space. This suggests a role for entorhinal grid coding in cognition beyond spatial navigation.
The authors show that human entorhinal cortex supports a grid cell-like representation of visual space. This visual grid pattern is stably anchored to the external visual world in a fashion analogous to rodent grid representations of navigable space.