Reviews & Analysis

Conclusive evidence for defective neurodevelopment in schizophrenia is lacking. Two DNA methylation studies now draw a link between fetal brain epigenomes, epigenetic alterations in the adult diseased brain and genetic risk for the disease.

Two studies invite us to reconsider the nature of striatal dopamine signals. Accumbens dopamine appears to signal the value of overt action and prediction errors arise from deviations in these signals.

A working memory representation goes missing in monkey parietal cortex during categorization learning, but is still found in the prefrontal cortex.

Predicting an individual's behavior is a formidable challenge for neuroimaging. A study now finds a strong link between an individual's ability to sustain attention and an extended, but specific, set of brain connections.

Aberrant epigenomes define many childhood and adult brain cancers, as demonstrated by widespread changes to DNA methylation patterns, redistribution of histone marks and disruption of chromatin structure. In this Review, the authors describe the convergence of genetic, metabolic and microenvironmental factors on mechanisms of epigenetic deregulation in brain cancer.

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) establish a permissive microenvironment that positively influences glioma formation, progression and response to treatment. TAMs elaborate growth factors and cytokines that collectively facilitate tumor proliferation, survival and migration. Defining the distinct roles of these stromal cells in the glioma ecosystem may yield new opportunities for therapeutic targeting.

Reactive astrocytes have been proposed to become incompetent bystanders in epilepsy as a result of cellular changes rendering them incapable of performing housekeeping tasks. This review discusses new research that suggests that reactive astrocytes may drive the disease process by impairing the inhibitory action of neuronal GABA receptors.

Previous work has suggested that cortical recurrent circuits can self-sustain their activity without thalamic input. A study now demonstrates that this is not the case in the awake brain, which tightly locks cortical timing to thalamic activity.

Synaptic plasticity during learning is as fundamental as it is hard to study. The underlying synaptic plasticity rule has now been inferred using only the firing rate statistics of visual neurons in monkeys before and after learning.

Previous studies have reported 'preplay' of hippocampal neural activity patterns associated with events yet to occur. Silva et al. challenge this finding on the basis of large-scale recordings before and after experiences.

The largest survey of gene expression ever performed in the adult human brain reveals highly stereotyped transcriptional patterning across individuals. The most stably patterned genes are enriched for neuronal annotations, disease associations, drug targets and correspond to resting state functional networks.

Neurons receive synaptic input primarily onto their dendrites. This review focuses on how synaptic inputs are integrated by dendrites, with an emphasis on recent work in the intact brain. It describes the range of computations dendrites perform on their inputs, highlighting their critical role in information processing in the brain.

A study now demonstrates that ephrin-B3 recruits and stabilizes PSD-95 at excitatory synapses by direct interaction. Unusually, phosphorylation of ephrin-B3, elicited by neuron depolarization, inhibits this interaction.

The serotonin 1A receptor expressed on mature granule cells in the dentate gyrus mediates the behavioral, neurogenic and endocrine effects of the antidepressant fluoxetine in the mouse.

Previous experiments have suggested that many P2X family channels undergo a time-dependent process of pore dilation when activated by ATP. Li et al. now propose a different interpretation of the key experiments.

Complex demographic and behavioral phenotypes can arise from coordinated interactions among brain systems. A single axis of co-variation spanning 'negative' and 'positive' attributes links diverse participant characteristics with specific patterns of brain connectivity.

Measuring brain connections in humans continues to pose challenges despite the recent advances in MRI technology. The authors contrast methods used in humans with those used in animals and show the extent to which human techniques can inform us about connections despite their limitations.

There is growing realization that glia actively signal with neurons and influence synaptic development, transmission and plasticity through an array of secreted and contact-dependent signals. We propose that disruptions in neuron-glia signaling contribute to synaptic and cognitive impairment in disease.