Increasingly forceful movements are thought to arise from the recruitment of additional cells to the active motoneuron pool. McLean and colleagues now demonstrate that two completely different classes of spinal premotor interneurons drive motoneurons during slow and fast swimming of zebrafish larvae. As the fish accelerate, the 'slow' interneurons are progressively silenced while the 'fast' interneurons take over.

(pp 1367 and 1419)

The role of inferotemporal cortex in decoding two-dimensional patterns has been extensively studied, but the more difficult problem of three-dimensional shape representation has been relatively unexplored. In this issue, Yamane and colleagues use new techniques for adaptive stimulus presentation and response modeling to extensively characterize neural coding for three-dimensional objects. The cover is an image of Henry Moore's "Sheep Piece" (1971-1972; reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation, http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk).

(pp 1243 and 1352)

How important is ongoing neurogenesis to the function of the adult brain? Imayoshi and colleagues show that ongoing neurogenesis has critical, yet distinct, roles in both the olfactory bulb and hippocampus. The cover depicts a coronal section through the olfactory bulb.

(pp 1124 and 1153)

To find out what makes professional athletes different from the rest of us, Aglioti and colleagues asked whether they react differently when viewing other athletes performing. In this issue, they report that elite basketball players are better at predicting whether a basketball will land in the basket and have higher transcranial magnetic stimulation–evoked motor potentials when the ball misses its mark.

©iStockphoto.com/Alexander Hafemann

(p 1109)

Ribbon synapses in the vertebrate retina require precise apposition between photoreceptor termini and bipolar cell dendrites. Sato et al. identify pikachurin, a previously unknown dystroglycan-binding protein, as being important for ribbon synapse structure and function. The cover image shows a rod photoreceptor synapse in a pikachurin-null retina where the invagination of rod synaptic terminals (green) envelops only the horizontal cell processes (magenta) and the synaptic ribbon of a rod photoreceptor (yellow).857923

Sanshool, the compound responsible for the unique tingling sensations experienced when consuming Szechuan peppercorns, is known to activate sensory neurons. Bautista and colleagues now show that the mechanism supporting this effect is the inhibition of two-pore potassium channels. (p 772)

in vivo(p 721)

This issue marks the 10th anniversary of Nature Neuroscience, which made its debut in May 1998. In this month's editorial, we review the journal's history and how the field has developed in the past decade. To celebrate the occasion, we have collected some of our most notable publications on our blog, Action Potential. These papers will be available for free online during May. (p 521)

The ability to make appropriate choices is critical for survival. Successful decision making requires the integration of sensory information, motivational states and potential outcomes to select the best action. Recently, there has been great progress in our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting decision making, from basic perceptual decisions to social interactions. In this issue, we present a collection of reviews on the neurobiology of decision making. Cover credit: Sandra Baker / Alamy. (pp 387-416)

Both ectodermal placode and neural crest cells make up the ganglia, but little is known about the formative mechanisms. Shiau and colleagues now report that Robo2/Slit1 signaling is essential for mediating interactions between placode and neural crest cells during formation of the trigeminal ganglion. The cover shows a well assembled trigeminal ganglion in a day three chick embryo as revealed by neuronal markers (Islet1 in red and TuJ1 in green) and HNK-1 (in blue). (p 269)

The waking firing patterns of hippocampal neurons recur in subsequent sleep, a process thought to be involved in the consolidation of recently acquired memory traces. In this issue, O'Neill et al. show that reactivation is shaped by activity-dependent processes that occur during exploration, representing the recent exploratory behavior of the animal. The cover depicts the spatial firingrate map of a CA1 pyramidal cell, overlaid with traces recorded from multiple hippocampal sites.Image courtesy of Ben Micklem. (pp 126 and 209)

On- and off-center afferents from the lateral geniculate nucleus form two separate channels of visual processing, which are thought to converge in the primary visual cortex. Jin and colleagues now report that this may not be the case. In a given cortical territory, most of the converging afferents were likely to be of the same contrast polarity, and off-center afferents dominated the cortical representation. The cover illustrates the parallel on and off channels as well as the off pathway dominance in central vision, as the small black dots on the white background are easier to see than the reverse contrast. (p 88)