Volume 10 Issue 10, October 2007

Maintaining balance requires the translation of a high-level command—“Keep the body's center of mass over the feet”—to low-level adjustments in individual muscles and joints. A new paper finds that a simple translation between these two levels of control provides a robust explanation for responses to several types of perturbations.

A study in this issue reports that, in mice, embryonic cortical neurons transplanted into injured adult motor cortex can rapidly and accurately reinnervate distant projections. These remarkable results urgently need to be replicated.

Despite the widespread use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, we still do not fully understand what it measures. A new study reports that oxygen-concentration changes and local field potentials are concurrent in time and space.

The identity of the tip link, which converts mechanical force to channel opening in hair cells, has been controversial, with different groups promoting cadherin 23 or protocadherin 15. A new paper in Nature shows that both proteins are involved.