Articles in 2015

Oxytocin tunes the responses of neurons in the left auditory cortex to pup calls and may thus promote pup retrieval by virgin female mice.

Two studies use zebrafish models to investigate the mechanisms through which neuronal activity influences myelination.

How the firing of neurons in a population generates cortical representations has not been fully elucidated, but a new study shows that population activity can be understood in terms of the degree of coupling of the spiking of a single neuron to the spiking of the overall population.

Exposure to environmental insults such as maternal stress during prenatal and postnatal development or paternal stress experience can have long-term effects on offspring brain function and behaviour. In this Review, Bale describes the mechanisms through which diverse insults reprogramme the epigenome and can even lead to transmission of the phenotype to subsequent generations.

Cannabinoid signalling is a major regulator of neurotransmitter release and plasticity at both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. In this Review, Soltesz and colleagues discuss emerging principles of cannabinoid control of network oscillations and their relevance for epilepsy and related comorbidities.

Early-life stress can contribute to predispositions to antisocial behaviour in adulthood. Similarly, acute or chronic stress during adulthood can alter our social behaviour. Sandi and Haller emphasize the importance of timing of stress for its effects on social behaviour and describe current understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

Astrocytes form borders that separate neural from non-neural tissue in both normal brain tissue and CNS lesions. In this Review, Michael Sofroniew discusses evidence that astrocytes along such borders have crucial roles in both attracting and restricting CNS inflammation, with important implications for diverse CNS disorders.

Ageing affects multiple aspects of brain structure and function, and therefore is likely to influence complex behaviours such as decision making. Samanez-Larkin and Knutson describe age-related changes in the affective and motivational circuits that drive choice, and consider how these influence decision making.

In this Opinion article, Nutt and colleagues examine the history of and current evidence for the dopamine theory of addiction. They argue that dopamine's role in addiction is more complicated than the role that is put forward in this theory.

Two studies show that the ventromedial hypothalamus is a key regulator of defensive behaviours.

The probabilistic behaviour ofCaenorhabditis elegansin response to a fixed olfactory stimulus arises owing to variability in the activity state of the neural circuit that receives the sensory input.

This study shows that the circadian geneClockdrives the maturation of parvalbumin-expressing interneuron networks, and therefore critical period plasticity, in the mouse visual cortex.