Volume 21 Issue 3, March 2020

In mice, temporally patterned inputs to the motor cortex that controls the forelimb are required for a well-trained reaching behaviour.

Fear extinction memories are formed and stored within a population of reward-encoding neurons in the basolateral amygdala.

In a mouse model of prion disease, blocking a major branch of the unfolded protein response selectively in astrocytes was highly neuroprotective, reducing neurodegeneration, reducing astrocyte reactivity and increasing longevity.

One of two anatomically and functionally characterized subpopulations of neurons in the mouse paraventricular thalamus forms a thalamo-corticothalamic loop with the infralimbic cortex that regulates arousal.

Much progress has been made in understanding astrocytes, but details on their functions and interactions remain difficult to determine. Yu, Nagai and Khakh give an overview of recent advances in the toolbox for molecular, genetic, morphological and physiological investigations into astrocytes.

Interactions between immune cells and neurons are now widely believed to be important for the regulation of brain function. In their Review, Greenhalgh, David and Bennett highlight the importance of interactions between resident and infiltrating immune cells and the brain’s other major cellular population — glial cells — for brain function.

The dentate gyrus has an important role in memory formation in the hippocampus. In this Review, Thomas Hainmueller and Marlene Bartos examine the cells and circuits of the dentate gyrus, and discuss the evidence indicating that this brain region has multiple mnemonic functions.

Certain biological properties vary across different areas of the cerebral cortex. In this Perspective, Xiao-Jing Wang proposes that macroscopic gradients in some properties align with functional hierarchy and can lead to qualitative differences in function.