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Dopamine regulates reinforcement-based plasticity at the single-spine level on medium spiny neurons in the striatum by increasing the gain of Hebbian plasticity.
Two new studies show that the nematodeCaenorhabditis elegansdisplays a sleep-like state in response to heat shock and suggest that this state is necessary for recovery from cellular stress.
Visual stimuli can often be predicted by other stimuli in the environment — for example, a barking sound would predict the sight of a dog but not a cat. In this Review, Summerfield and de Lange discuss how expectation modulates neural signals and behaviour in response to visual stimuli.
Despite centuries of recreational use of cannabis, it is only relatively recently that its mechanisms of action, and the existence of endogenous cannabinoids, have been discovered. In this Timeline article, Raphael Mechoulam and colleagues discuss early research on the plant cannabinoids and speculate on the directions this research might take in the future.
Myths about the brain — neuromyths — have established themselves among teachers worldwide, often contributing to poor practice. Paul Howard-Jones shows how fact became distorted into popular neuromyth by biases and cultural conditions that largely remain, threatening current attempts at authentic dialogue between neuroscience and education.
Recent data have shown that orexins regulate not only wakefulness but also feeding, emotional behaviour, reward seeking and autonomic and endocrine responses. Takeshi Sakurai summarizes these findings and proposes that the orexin system regulates the response of the body to its internal and external environments to support various motivated behaviours.
Distinct populations of neurons in the posterior dorsal part of the medial amygdala antagonistically regulate social behaviour and self-grooming, a non-social behaviour.
The formation and maturation of the neuromuscular junction require the concerted efforts of the presynaptic nerve terminal, the postsynaptic muscle fibre and perisynaptic Schwann cells. In this Review, Robitaille and colleagues describe the molecular and activity-dependent processes that underlie the development of neuron–muscle contacts.
The recently discovered hippocampal 'time cells' are thought to represent the flow of time in specific memories. In this Review, Howard Eichenbaum discusses the evidence for the existence of time cells, describes their characteristics and relationship with place cells, and considers their role in memory.
