Research Highlights |
Featured
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Editorial |
Learning in the wild
Much of what people know about science is learned informally. Education policy-makers should take note.
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Letter |
Learning-related fine-scale specificity imaged in motor cortex circuits of behaving mice
It is generally accepted that specific neuronal circuits in the brain's cortex drive behavioural execution, but the relationship between the performance of a task and the function of a circuit is unknown. Here, this problem was tackled by using a technique that allows many neurons within the same circuit to be monitored simultaneously. The findings indicate that enhanced correlated activity in specific ensembles of neurons can identify and encode specific behavioural responses while a task is learned.
- Takaki Komiyama
- , Takashi R. Sato
- & Karel Svoboda
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Letter |
Impaired hippocampal–prefrontal synchrony in a genetic mouse model of schizophrenia
A deletion on human chromosome 22 (22q11.2) is one of the largest genetic risk factors for schizophrenia. Mice with a corresponding deletion have problems with working memory, one feature of schizophrenia. It is now found that these mice also show disruptions in synchronous firing between neurons of the prefrontal cortex and of the hippocampus, an electrophysiological phenomenon that has been linked to learning and memory and which is also thought to be disrupted in schizophrenia patients.
- Torfi Sigurdsson
- , Kimberly L. Stark
- & Joshua A. Gordon
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Letter |
Human memory strength is predicted by theta-frequency phase-locking of single neurons
Although explored in the rodent, the relationship between single neuron activity, oscillations and behavioural learning is unknown in humans. Here, successful memory formation in humans was predicted by the coordination of spike timing relative to the local theta oscillation. These data provide a direct connection between the behavioural modulation of oscillations and plasticity within specific circuits.
- Ueli Rutishauser
- , Ian B. Ross
- & Erin M. Schuman
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Research Highlights |
Neuroscience: Memory reading
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Research Highlights |
Neuroscience: Use it or lose it
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Letter |
Rapid spine stabilization and synaptic enhancement at the onset of behavioural learning
The brain's capacity to respond to instructive capacity underlies behavioural learning, but how instructive experience acts on the juvenile brain, a period in which learning is often enhanced, remains unknown. Here, two-photon in vivo imaging is used to study the brains of zebra finches as they learn to sing. The results indicate that behavioural learning results when instructive experience is able to rapidly stabilize and strengthen synapses on the sensorimotor neurons that control the learned behaviour.
- Todd F. Roberts
- , Katherine A. Tschida
- & Richard Mooney
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Books & Arts |
In Retrospect: Funes the Memorious
When Rodrigo Quian Quiroga visited Jorge Luis Borges's private library, he found annotated books that bear witness to the writer's fascination for memory and neuroscience.
- Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
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Letter |
Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network
Rodents have an orientation map of their surroundings, produced and updated by a network of neurons in the entorhinal cortex known as 'grid cells'. However, it is currently unknown whether humans encode their location in a similar manner. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans, a macroscopic signal representing a subject's position in a virtual reality environment is now detected that meets the criteria for defining grid-cell encoding.
- Christian F. Doeller
- , Caswell Barry
- & Neil Burgess
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Research Highlights |
Neuroscience: Brain cell gain and cocaine
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News & Views |
Learn to beat an identity cheat
Parent birds commonly face the problem of distinguishing their own brood from foreign chicks. Learnt chick-recognition evolves only when parents do not mistakenly learn to reject their own young.
- Rebecca Kilner
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News & Views |
Astrocytes as aide-mémoires
Memory formation is known to occur at the level of synaptic contacts between neurons. It therefore comes as a surprise that another type of brain cell, the astrocyte, is also involved in establishing memory.
- Mirko Santello
- & Andrea Volterra
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News & Views |
Editing out fear
Retrieving a memory initiates a window of vulnerability for that memory. Simple behavioural methods can modify distressing memories during this window, eliminating fear reactions to traumatic reminders.
- Gregory J. Quirk
- & Mohammed R. Milad
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News & Views |
Editing out fear
Retrieving a memory initiates a window of vulnerability for that memory. Simple behavioural methods can modify distressing memories during this window, eliminating fear reactions to traumatic reminders.
- Gregory J. Quirk
- & Mohammed R. Milad