Articles in 2022

Dynamin mediates vesicle scission during endocytosis, and here is shown to exist with syndapin 1 in biomolecular condensates at the endocytic zone that enable its participation in ultrafast endocytosis.

A study in mice finds that different dopamine neuron subsystems in the midbrain track food and fluid ingestion at different stages of this process, and that animals can use this information to learn about the results of ingestion.

Core features of the language network in the brain are consistent across languages and language families.

High-resolution transcriptomic studies have enabled detailed dissection of the diverse cell types of the hypothalamus in adulthood and at different stages of development. In this Review, Benevento, Hökfelt and Harkany describe the processes that govern the generation and specification of cell types in the developing hypothalamus.

A subpopulation of GABAergic neurons in the mouse VTA drives restorative sleep in response to social defeat stress.

In this Review, Liu and Bohórquez explore the neural basis for sugar preference in mammals. The authors discuss the role of the gut in recognizing glucose and its consequence for sugar preference.

Recent studies of transient receptor potential (TRP) channel structure have provided unique insight into the function of TRP channels in our normal sensations and in pain. In this Review, Rosenbaum et al. examine recent advances in the field of TRP ion channel structure–function relationships and their role in pain.

Social valence — the valence assigned to a social agent or social stimulus — is complex to compute. In this Review, Padilla-Coreano et al. explain how social attributes, social history, social memory, social rank and social isolation states are integrated to modulate social valence assignment.

Dendritic arbors are shaped by adhesion-molecule interactions between developing dendrites and the extracellular environment that are transduced by dendritic mechanosensitive channels into local calcium transients.

Brain lesions in individuals who subsequently show remission of smoking addiction share a common connectivity profile.

A new study shows that α-synuclein can interact with protein components of membraneless organelles involved in mRNA metabolism, and that such interactions may have relevance in Parkinson disease.

What’s the point of public engagement? Why can’t we just be neuroscience researchers? In this Comment I will argue that communicating our science is a key aspect of being a neuroscientist and that our science can be enriched by this.

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.

A population of fever-generating neurons in the hypothalamus coordinates diverse sickness behaviours in mice.

In this Review, Panzeri, Moroni, Safaai and Harvey explain how the levels and structures of correlations among the activity of neurons in a population shape information encoding, transmission and readout, and describe how future research could determine how the structures of correlations are optimized.

In mice, infusions of young cerebrospinal fluid into the brains of aged animals promote oligodendrogenesis and improve memory.

Comparisons of real networks with null models enable researchers to test how statistically unexpected a particular network feature is. In this Review, Váša and Mišić describe different null-model approaches and instantiations, as well as their emerging uses and limitations.

Hippocampal inhibitory interneurons shape memory formation and storage through cell type-specific mechanisms. In this review, Topolnik and Tamboli discuss how soma-targeting, dendrite-targeting and interneuron-targeting interneurons may specialize in supporting hippocampal oscillations, synaptic plasticity and memory processes.

Pathological forms of amyloid proteins, such as tau and α-synuclein, are thought to drive neurodegeneration. Li and Liu describe how techniques that reveal high-resolution protein structures can provide insight into polymorphic amyloid fibril formation and the relationships between amyloid protein conformation and disease.