Reviews & Analysis

Sleep is an active state during which the synaptic connections that form memories are remodelled. In this Perspective, Wassing and colleagues discuss how failures in sleep-dependent adaptation to emotionally distressing experiences might be a key contributor to post-traumatic stress disorder and related conditions.

Altered network activity during sleep is observed in some individuals with Alzheimer disease and in mouse models of the disorder. In this Perspective, Inna Slutsky proposes that hyperexcitability and sleep disturbances in Alzheimer disease result from disruption of the mechanisms that maintain activity homeostasis in the brain.

Sub-additive responses to simultaneously presented stimuli and quenching of variability in responses to repeated presentations of a stimulus are characteristics of neurons in the primary visual cortex. In this Perspective, Goris et al. argue that these phenomena often co-occur and may have common mechanistic and computational origins.

Synaptic engineering involves the synthetic insertion of new synapses between neurons in vivo. In this Perspective, Rabinowitch, Colón-Ramos and Krieg explore this emerging approach for studying neural circuits, describing the different methods that have been used and how they have been implemented.

Neurobiological organizational principles suggest that a generative grammar exists in the brain. In this Perspective, Dragoi proposes how neural grammar enables specific experience-independent, internally generated patterns of activity acquired via spontaneous generative combination of pre-existing sequential motifs to support internally generated representations of experience in the hippocampus.

Architectures in neural networks commonly assume that inference is hierarchical. In this Perspective, Suzuki et al. present the shallow brain hypothesis, a neural processing mechanism based on neuroanatomical and electrophysiological evidence that intertwines hierarchical cortical processing with a massively parallel process to which subcortical areas substantially contribute.

The prospects for applying dynamical systems theory in neuroscience are changing dramatically. In this Perspective, Durstewitz et al. discuss dynamical system reconstruction using recurrent neural networks to directly infer a formal surrogate from an experimentally probed system and consider its potential for revolutionizing neuroscience.

Song and speech may have distinct roles in human communication. Scott and colleagues describe the mechanisms underlying the production and perception of song and speech, evaluate the evidence for distinct song-processing mechanisms in the human brain, and consider the implications of such specialization.

Membrane excitability is central to neuronal function, and neurons must be resilient to changes in its underlying parameters. In this Perspective article, Marom and Marder suggest that two complementary mechanisms contribute to the resilience of membrane excitability: rapid ‘kinetic-based’ regulation of ion channel proteins and slower homeostatic control of ion channel membrane densities.

Neurodegenerative diseases show idiosyncratic spatial patterns of progressive protein malformations in the brain. In this Perspective, Vogel et al. discuss the role of inter-regional connectivity in constraining and modulating the spread of pathological proteins and provide a framework for patient-tailored prognostics.

Various theories exist for the function of the dentate gyrus in learning and memory. In this Perspective article, Rangel and colleagues compare a number of these theories and discuss how they may be further tested to develop a better understanding of dentate gyrus function.

Artificial neural networks are being widely used to model behavioural and neural data. In this Perspective article, Doerig et al. present neuroconnectionism as a Lakatosian research programme using artificial neural networks as a computational language for expressing falsifiable theories and hypotheses about the brain computations underlying cognition.

The thalamus is a subcortical structure that is highly interconnected with various brain regions. In this Perspective, Kai Hwang and colleagues examine the role of the human thalamus in the systems-level control of information processing.

In many animals, injury can be followed by a pattern of persistent pain and recuperative behaviour that facilitates effective recovery. In this Perspective, Seymour, Crook and Chen outline a control theory framework to explain the adaptive processes that occur in the brain that underlie behaviour after injury.

Neural manifolds can shed light on how heterogeneous neuronal population activity drives neural computations, but linking these insights to the underlying neuronal connectivity is challenging. Engel and colleagues emphasize the importance of approaches that seek to connect neural dynamics with connectivity, providing key examples of advances towards this goal.

Recent technological advances allow recordings of human brain activity to be made as participants engage in free movement inside and outside the laboratory. Suthana and colleagues describe these innovations, their application to cognitive neuroscience studies and their potential to transform our understanding of brain function in naturalistic settings.

In this Perspective, Floegel et al. examine two perspectives — musculoskeletal plant control and perceptual control — on modelling human motor control. They discuss the implications of adopting one or the other perspective when conducting such modelling and the consequences for our understanding of actions.

Ion channels in primary sensory neurons are molecular targets for the treatment of chronic pain. In this Perspective, Ovsepian and Waxman assess prospective gene therapies directed towards such targets and discuss their translational potential to enable precision pain medicine.

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.