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Chemokines were discovered as cytokines that have chemotactic properties. They are receiving renewed attention, this time from neuroscientists, owing to the possibility that they might act as neurotransmitters or neuromodulators. In a provocative Opinion article, Rostène and colleages review the evidence for this possibility.
The development of neuroprotective drugs has been hampered by the fact that many drugs interfere with normal brain functions. Stuart Lipton describes strategies for drug development that are based on the principle that drugs should interact with their target only during states of pathological activation.
Many neuroscientists are motivated by the hope that their research will ultimately benefit people with neurological and mental disorders. Steven Hyman asks whether neuroscience has progressed to the point that the diagnostic manuals for mental disorders can usefully incorporate its findings.
The mechanisms underlying the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are unclear. Ridding and Rothwell argue that a better understanding of these mechanisms and the conditions for which rTMS is used will reveal whether rTMS offers true therapeutic potential.
It is widely accepted that adult neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb in the mammalian brain, but whether it is restricted to these areas remains controversial. Gould discusses evidence for and against neocortical neurogenesis in the adult, emphasizing some key methodological issues.
Decades of research have not yet succeeded in definitively characterizing the neuroanatomy of speech processing. Hickok and Poeppel describe a dual-stream model of speech processing and discuss how this model can account for some of the field's paradoxical findings.
Loss of aligned glial pathways may contribute to the inability of axons to successfully regenerate following CNS injury. Raisman and Li discuss why transplantation of olfactory ensheathing cells might be a promising strategy to re-establish these pathways and restore function.
