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Neural oscillations are thought to have an important role in syntactic structure building but views differ on their exact function in this context. In this Perspective, Kazanina and Tavano explore two proposed functions for neural oscillations in this process, namely chunking and multiscale information integration.
In this Perspective article, Foster and colleagues describe converging evidence supporting an anatomical and functional division of the posterior cingulate cortex into three subregions that contribute to different cognitive tasks.
Bogdan and colleagues consider how the findings of recent genome-wide association studies of substance use and addiction risk can be integrated with our current understanding of the neurobiological contributions to substance use disorders, and propose a new genetically informed model of addiction.
When humans attempt two tasks at once, there are costs to task performance. In this Perspective, Garner and Dux discuss neurophysiological evidence for whether these multitasking costs are linked to the human capability for rapid knowledge generalization to perform novel tasks.
Battaglia and colleagues discuss evidence for functional interactions between memory replay and default mode network (DMN) activity and propose an updated model of memory consolidation and retrieval in which the DMN acts as a hub for cascaded replay across the brain.
When anticipating a threat, many animals ‘freeze’, becoming temporarily immobile. Roelofs and Dayan argue that this response enables the coordination of cognitive and somatic processes that prepare the animal for action and describe how CNS, autonomic and sensorimotor activity must be integrated to regulate freezing.
Accumulating evidence indicates that the anterior thalamic nuclei make important contributions to cognition. Aggleton and O’Mara review these findings and propose that the anterior thalamic nuclei, hippocampus and cortex act together to support episodic memory function.
The past two decades have witnessed considerable interest in linking interindividual differences in behaviour to differences in brain structure. In this Perspective, Genon et al. examine how the study of brain structure–behaviour associations in healthy populations has developed during this period and the current challenges for this field.
Deciphering the mechanisms that cause encoded memories to be forgotten may help us to understand both adaptive forgetting and pathological memory loss. In this Perspective, Tomás Ryan and Paul Frankland propose that forgetting involves neuroplasticity that alters engram cells accessibility and is governed by changes in environmental predictability.
