Volume 20 Issue 11, November 2019

In mice, CREB–Zfp189 interactions in the prefrontal cortex drive a transcriptional network that increases resilience to chronic social defeat stress.

Detailed transcriptomic analysis of cells within the cortical layers of the human medium temporal gyrus revealed surprising homology with existing mouse transcriptomic data — but also some important differences.

RNA-binding proteins regulate the use of mRNA during periods of stress, in part through the formation of transient membraneless organelles known as stress granules. In this Review, Wolozin and Ivanov examine the biology of such granules in neurons and their potential roles in a number of neurodegenerative diseases.

Astrocytes in the spinal cord and brain are involved in the regulation of physiological and pathological pain signalling. Ji and colleagues here describe the cellular and molecular mechanisms through which astrocytes contribute to the induction and maintenance of chronic pain and itch.

Rodent models are essential for characterizing the mechanisms underlying depression as well as for the development of fast-acting and innovative antidepressants. Here, Anand Gururajan and colleagues review strategies for inducing depressive-like behaviours and endophenotypes, and discuss how genetic and circuit-dissection techniques might be used to refine existing models and generate new ones.

Dopamine signals are implicated in not only reporting reward prediction errors but also various probabilistic computations. In this Opinion article, Gershman and Uchida propose that these different roles for dopamine can be placed within a common reinforcement learning framework.