Articles in 2015

Dopamine D1 receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons in the medial nucleus accumbens shell that project to the lateral hypothalamus mediate rapid control of feeding behaviour in mice.

Pathological variants of FUS that are associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or frontotemporal dementia can form irreversible gel assemblies that trap and impair the function of ribonucleoproteins and, thereby, disrupt protein synthesis.

Endocannabinoid signalling affects the behavioural domains of acquired fear, anxiety and stress-coping by modulating synaptic functions in specific brain circuits. Lutz and colleagues discuss the cellular mechanisms involved in these effects and the potential for endocannabinoid-based therapies to treat anxiety and stress-related disorders.

The precise timing of impulse transmission along axons is crucial for synaptic plasticity and brain oscillations, and is partly determined by myelin thickness. In this Opinion article, R. Douglas Fields discusses how electrical activity influences myelin thickness and thus conduction velocity and circuit properties.

Sensory systems encode and interpret patterns of contrast in sensory signals to provide an accurate representation of an animal's environment. Maler and colleagues here outline our current understanding of the principles of contrast coding in the electrosensory system and make comparisons with contrast coding in the visual system.

Cortico–basal ganglia circuits are involved in goal-directed and habitual actions. Jahanshahiet al. review evidence for the involvement of the cortico–basal ganglia network in goal-directed and habitual inhibition, and propose that some of the symptoms of basal ganglia disorders represent an imbalance between goal-directed and habitual action and inhibition.

Microglia contribute to the propagation of tau between brain regions in mice, by phagocytosis and release of the protein.

A top-down pathway from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex regulates the retrieval of recent fear memories in the hippocampus.

The cortex can generate packets of neuronal activity with stereotypical sequential structure spontaneously or in response to sensory stimuli. In this Opinion article, Luczak and colleagues examine the evidence for such packets and discuss how packets may act as fundamental units of cortical communication.

Inhibition of GLI1 promotes the endogenous response to demyelination, including the recruitment and differentiation of neural stem cells.

Various brain regions have been implicated in emotion regulation, although this process remains poorly understood. In this Opinion article, Etkin and colleagues bring together neuroimaging findings and ideas from value-based decision-making and reinforcement learning to propose a conceptual framework for emotion regulation.