Browse Articles

In this Journal Club, Tina Liu describes a 1988 paper that revealed the capacity of the sensory cortex for functional reorganization

The location-specific firing of hippocampal place cells changes when an animal enters a new environment, a phenomenon known as ‘remapping’. In this Perspective, André A. Fenton challenges standard models of place cell remapping and proposes a key role for the ‘re-registration’ of internally organized place cell population dynamics in the encoding of distinct environments.

A subset of female mice that show anxiety-related traits seek out a starvation-like state when exposed to repeated stress

The main direction of motor skill-specific information between rat primary motor cortex and dorsolateral striatum is shown to switch from cortex-predominant before learning to striatum-predominant after learning.

Many cognitive functions rely on the ability to link distinct but related memories, while retaining the capacity to recall the individual details of the linked memories. Inokuchi and colleagues describe evidence that memory linking involves engram overlap and discuss the mechanisms that regulate this process.

The developmental colonization of the brain by microglial progenitors and establishment of microglial cell identity set the stage for microglial function in the adult. Barry-Carroll and Gomez-Nicola describe the mechanisms that regulate the development of microglia, including their origins, infiltration and colonization of the brain, proliferation and fate determination.

A large network of brain regions is involved in salient distractor processing.

Many brain areas support complex language processing behaviours. In this Review, Fedorenko et al. disentangle the ‘core’ language system as functionally distinct from the perceptual and motor brain areas and knowledge and reasoning systems it closely interacts with during language comprehension and production.

Parkinson disease (PD) has been linked to dysfunction in a number of key intracellular signalling pathways that contribute to disease pathology. Coukos and Krainc describe the physiological functions of a selection of PD-linked proteins and their convergent effects on mitochondrial, lysosomal and synaptic dysfunction in PD.

Pathological compulsive behaviour is a potential transdiagnostic symptom of several neuropsychiatric disorders. In this Review, Robbins et al. examine the psychological basis of compulsions and compulsivity and their underlying neural circuitry, focused on fronto-striatal systems implicated in goal-directed behaviour and habits.

A new study captures nearly the full repertoire of primate natural behaviour and reveals that highly distributed cortical activity maintains multifaceted dynamic social relationships.

The synaptic protein SynGAP exerts its effects on synaptic plasticity via a structural role rather than its GTPase-activating protein activity.

Selective vulnerability of particular neuronal cell types is a characteristic of neurodegenerative diseases. Martin Kampmann explores our current understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that lead to selective vulnerability in different diseases.

There is a pressing need for drugs that effectively control pharmaco-resistant seizures and prevent their generation. In this Review, Vezzani and co-workers discuss the interconnected roles of mTOR signalling and neuroinflammatory processes in epileptogenesis, and how targeting these pathways might prove useful therapeutically.

One of the long-term sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection is ‘brain fog’, which is shown in this study to be linked to systemic inflammation and leakiness of the blood–brain barrier.

Neurons in the mouse subiculum encode concave and convex geometrical environmental features.

Ning-long Xu discusses a 1999 paper that outlined a mechanism by which cortical pyramidal neurons integrate layer-specific inputs.

Innate fear-like responses are thought to involve the amygdala, but here a tetra-synaptic pathway is identified that mediates odour-evoked innate fear in mice.

How does motor-cortex activity well before movement not drive motor outputs? In this Review, Churchland and Shenoy detail how searching for answers transitioned the understanding of neural activity during movement from single-neuron tuning towards population-level factors and revealed an essential computational role of output-null factors.

Sleep is an active state during which the synaptic connections that form memories are remodelled. In this Perspective, Wassing and colleagues discuss how failures in sleep-dependent adaptation to emotionally distressing experiences might be a key contributor to post-traumatic stress disorder and related conditions.