Review Articles in 2018

Knowledge of the role of glial–neuronal interactions in the physiology of food intake and energy metabolism is emerging. This review highlights the role of astrocytes, microglia, and tanycytes in central control of systemic metabolism.

A satisfactory understanding of how natural stimuli are encoded by neural circuits has remained elusive. Advances in machine learning provide new approaches to this problem by merging constraints imposed by stimulus statistics and behavioral goals.

Somatic mutations occur after fertilization and are present in only some cells of an individual. Somatic mutations contribute to normal and abnormal brain development, including neurodevelopmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder.

Many neurodegenerative diseases involve the seeded propagation and spread of abnormally shaped proteins within the nervous system. The resulting disease reflects the interaction between the misfolded proteins and the host milieu.

Microglia are the sentinels, housekeepers, and defenders of the brain. In this review we consider the immune checkpoints that control microglial functions and discuss how their imbalance and subsequent neuroinflammation leads to neurodegeneration.

Older people often have more than one form of neuropathology. The authors describe how insights from the genomic architecture of syndromically defined neurodegenerative diseases can be integrated to inform person-specific trajectories of brain aging.

Neurodegenerative diseases cause progressive loss of brain functions associated with aging. Here we review intricate genotype–phenotype relationships, shared pathogenic mechanisms, and emerging therapeutic opportunities and challenges.

The authors review the current state of rodent models for AD, PD, FTD, and ALS. Limitations and utility of current models, issues regarding translatability, and future directions for developing animal models of these human disorders are discussed.

Neurodegenerative diseases impact specific cell populations within the brain. However, not all cells within the population are impacted, a phenomenon called selective cellular vulnerability. The molecular basis of this vulnerability is discussed.

A newly recognized process in neurodegenerative disease is accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates that self-replicate to spread damage between cells and tissues. This process has implications in designing strategies for treatment and diagnosis.

Adequate blood supply and vascular integrity are key to normal brain functioning. Cerebral blood flow and blood–brain barrier disruption contribute to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders as reviewed in humans and animal models.

The authors review recent work at the intersection of cognitive science, computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence that develops and tests computational models mimicking neural and cognitive function during a wide range of tasks.

This article presents best practices on how field potential recordings (EEG, MEG, ECoG and LFP) can be analyzed to identify large-scale brain dynamics, and highlights issues and limitations of interpretation.

In this Review the authors discuss recent findings supporting a framework in which the hippocampus comprises principal cell subpopulations forming nonuniform parallel circuits that are independently controlled and affect a variety of behaviors.

The authors review the latest evidence on hippocampal pattern separation, survey recent data from cognitive tasks testing pattern separation and their application to clinical studies, and evaluate the assumptions that guide studies in the area.

Polanía, Nitsche and Ruff summarize the state of non-invasive brain stimulation research in humans, discuss some current debates about properties and limitations of these methods, and give recommendations for how these challenges may be addressed.