Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Patterns of connectivity between activity time courses of distinct brain regions are unique to each individual and can act as an identifying fingerprint. Image from jelen80/iStock/Thinkstock.p 1664
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This protein quantitative trait analysis in monocytes evaluates cross-talk between Alzheimer risk loci and finds that the NME8 locus influences PTK2B, the CD33 risk allele leads to greater TREM2 expression, and the TREM1 risk allele is associated with a decreased TREM1/TREM2 ratio.
Misfolded Aβ proteins can form proteopathic seeds that drive initiation, progression, and spreading of amyloidosis in the brain. Jucker and colleagues report that Aβ seeds can persist in mouse brain for months in the absence of host-derived Aβ and can then regain propagative and pathogenic activity in the presence of host Aβ.
The authors show that episodic-memory representations progressively increase in scale along the hippocampal long axis, akin to the gradient of encoded space in the rodent hippocampus. They propose that this coding mechanism may enable the formation of memory hierarchies.
Using data from the Human Connectome Project, a single holistic multivariate analysis identified one strong mode of population co-variation: subjects were predominantly spread along a single ‘positive-negative’ axis linking lifestyle, demographic and psychometric measures to each other and to a specific pattern of functional brain connectivity.
The amygdala is known to process information about faces, but it has remained unclear whether eye gaze is also encoded. Recording single neurons in the amygdalae of neurosurgical patients, the authors found responses to identity of the faces, but not to gaze direction.
Anorexia nervosa provides a compelling example of persistent maladaptive behavior: the severe restriction of caloric intake. Activity in the dorsal striatum was greater in patients than in controls during food choice and correlated with subsequent caloric intake, suggesting that dorsal fronto-striatal circuits are involved in this disorder.
People with autism are known for their inflexible behavior. Using a perceptual learning protocol, the authors demonstrate initially efficient learning in observers with autism, followed by anomalously poor learning when the target location is changed (over-specificity). Furthermore, over-specificity can be circumvented by a specifically designed protocol that reduces stimulus repetitions.
The prevailing view for purinergic P2X receptor channels is that their ion conduction pores dilate upon prolonged activation. This study finds that the hallmark shift in equilibrium potential observed with prolonged channel activation does not result from pore dilation, but from time-dependent alterations in the concentration of intracellular ions.
In this study, the authors show that microglia play an important role in the propagation of pathogenic tau protein. In addition, the authors find that spread of the tau protein occurs via exosome secretion from these microglial cells.
PSD-95 is one of the most abundant proteins at synapses and underlies synapse development and function. Hruska and colleagues show that the synaptic localization and turnover of PSD-95 relies on a direct interaction with the trans-synaptic organizer ephrin-B3, which is negatively regulated by neuronal activity through MAPK-dependent phosphorylation of ephrin-B3.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are widely used antidepressants, but the mechanisms by which they influence behavior are only partially resolved. Using a combination of different approaches, the authors demonstrate that serotonin 1A receptors expressed in mature dentate gyrus granule cells are critical mediators of the response to SSRIs.
The study of speech or vocal disorder resulting from neurological diseases lacks a model capable of recapitulating vocal learning. This study suggests that the vocal disorder associated with Huntington's disease is observed in transgenic zebra finches carrying the full-length human mutant huntingtin gene.
Sleeping mammalian brains show high coherence of slow-wave activity. In mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, which have abnormal levels of amyloid-β, amyloid plaques and associated memory deficits, these waves are massively impaired. This impairment is related to the previously demonstrated neuronal hyperactivity. Pharmacological manipulations that reduce hyperactivity result in the reinstatement of slow-wave coherence and in memory improvement.
Optogenetic suppression of layer 4 in the sensory cortex reveals a surprising role for its activity in the cortical microcircuit: layer 4 suppresses the main cortical output layer—layer 5—through a direct translaminar inhibitory circuit. This translaminar inhibition sharpens spatial representations in the somatosensory cortex.
The basal forebrain (BF) is important for sleep-wake control. In this study, the authors performed cell type–specific recording and manipulation of four genetically defined BF cell types in freely moving mice and mapped their synaptic connections in slices, providing a BF circuit diagram for sleep-wake control.
Contextual modulation is ubiquitous in sensory processing. This study shows that, in visual cortex, spatial contextual modulation for natural inputs is not well described by existing models. Instead, it can be explained by inference about statistical structure in images, with modulation evident only when images contain spatial redundancies.
Increased signal-to-noise in neural representations of sensory stimuli is thought to underlie the perceptual benefits of attention. Manipulating reward contingencies across two locations dissociates visual cortical activity from attentional behavior. These data argue that attention works by selecting and filtering the relevant and irrelevant information represented in visual cortex.
This study shows that every individual has a unique pattern of functional connections between brain regions. This functional connectivity profile acts as a ‘fingerprint’ that can accurately identify the individual from a large group. Furthermore, an individual's connectivity profile can predict his or her level of fluid intelligence.
The human ability to choose relies considerably on frontoparietal association cortex. Constructing unified perception from inconclusive sensory input also requires selection among alternatives. Combining fMRI with a novel visual stimulus, Brascamp and colleagues find evidence against frontoparietal involvement in such perceptual selection, instead suggesting choice capability in the visual system itself.
New memory traces are believed to be reactivated and reorganized during sleep, mediated by the fine-tuned temporal interplay of neocortical slow oscillations, thalamo-cortical spindles and hippocampal ripples. The authors used intracranial recordings in humans to provide, for the first time, direct evidence for a systematic interaction of these oscillations in the human hippocampus.
The authors used trans-synaptic tracing to examine and compare circuit anatomy in mouse barrel and medial prefrontal cortex, revealing novel organizational features and contrasts between the two areas. Notably, medial prefrontal layer 5 neurons receive more long-distance inputs and more local inhibitory inputs than layer 5 neurons in barrel cortex.