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The astrocyte-released protein hevin (also known as SPARC-like protein 1) promotes thalamocortical synaptogenesis by acting as a 'bridge' between neurexin and neuroligin isoforms that do not interact directly.
Long-range GABAergic projections from the entorhinal cortex to CA1 of the hippocampus suppress feedforward inhibition to allow Schaffer collateral inputs to potentiate CA1 pyramidal neuron responses.
The long-held doctrine that an individual neuron releases only one type of small molecule neurotransmitter has been challenged in recent years. In this Progress article, Sabatini and colleagues discuss recent evidence suggesting that co-release of GABA occurs in several neuronal populations in the adult mammalian CNS and the implications of such co-release for neuronal signalling.
Sometimes when rats come to a location where a choice has to be made, they pause and look around, a behaviour that has been termed 'vicarious trial and error' (VTE). Redish reviews this behaviour and its underlying neurophysiology, and argues that VTE is probably the behavioural phenotype of a deliberative process.
Emerging evidence indicates that extracellular vesicles — including exosomes and microvesicles — may have an important role in intercellular communication in the nervous system. Budnik and colleagues provide an overview of this developing field, and discuss the involvement of such vesicles in neurological disorders.
The anterior hippocampus is thought to be involved in a wide range of cognitive functions, including memory, navigation and perception. In this Opinion article, Zeidman and Maguire show how improved functional imaging techniques are shedding light on the precise anatomy of this region and the contribution of different parts of the anterior hippocampus to specific cognitive functions.
Phasic signalling by midbrain dopamine neurons is thought to contribute to reward processing by encoding a reward prediction error. Schultz describes recent work suggesting that there are two distinct components of the phasic dopamine response and considers the probable functional role of each response component.
