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Miller and colleagues report that cottontop tamarin monkeys experience an auditory illusion also found in humans, suggesting that there are homologous auditory perceptual processes in monkey and man. Tamarins, native to the Columbian rainforest, can infer the presence of vocal calls that are partly obscured by a noise mask, indicative of perceptual processes that complete fragments of sounds when evidence suggests they are part of the same acoustic event. See page 783.
After a learning experience, memories are vulnerable to disruption during a consolidation period. Antisense against the transcription factor C/EBPβ in the hippocampus is now reported to disrupt the initial consolidation of memories, but not their 'reconsolidation' after later recall.
The hypothesis that prestin is the molecular motor in outer hair cells has been strengthened by a recent paper in Science identifying an unusual molecular mechanism for the effect.
Glial cells have been thought simply to respond to neural activity. A new report shows that slow glial calcium oscillations occur spontaneously and can cause excitation in nearby neurons.
Humans are better at recognizing individuals of their own race than of other races. Golby et al. now show that same-race faces elicit more activity in brain regions linked to face recognition.