Neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensory cortices receive input from cortical cells and the thalamus, yet it is unknown how these inputs interact to generate synchronous activity. Here authors show that unlike cortical inputs, thalamic inputs are asynchronous, suggesting that cortical synchronization is due to intracortical coupling.

    • Katayun Cohen-Kashi Malina
    • , Boaz Mohar
    •  & Ilan Lampl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Efficient coding suggests that adapting gain to match the varying stimulus statistics should help in optimizing behaviour. Here the authors show that adaptation in motion sensitive neurons maximizes information and improves movement accuracy in pursuit eye movements.

    • Bing Liu
    • , Matthew V. Macellaio
    •  & Leslie C. Osborne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are differentially expressed across cortical layers, yet it is unclear whether they show layer-specific effects on synaptic plasticity in the prefrontal cortex. Here, the authors compare nAChRs across L6 and L2/3 in human and mouse cortex and find they mediate opposite effects on synaptic plasticity.

    • Matthijs B. Verhoog
    • , Joshua Obermayer
    •  & Huibert D. Mansvelder

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans can learn alone or by watching others, strategies which may depend on similar or different neural networks. This study shows that people watching other players in a card game used computations in neurons of their rostral anterior cingulate cortex to learn through observation.

    • Michael R. Hill
    • , Erie D. Boorman
    •  & Itzhak Fried

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chromosome conformation is a dynamic process, especially in brain. Here, Mitchell and colleagues devise a method they call NeuroDam that can prospectively tag chromosome conformation in the mouse brain in vivo, and longitudinally assess long range chromosome looping weeks and months later.

    • Amanda C. Mitchell
    • , Behnam Javidfar
    •  & Schahram Akbarian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Retinal waves are important for visual system development. However, the mechanism involved in their generation remains largely unknown. Here using in vivotwo-photon imaging the authors identify the presence of retinal waves in zebrafish larvae and find that they are initiated at bipolar cells via presynaptic NMDARs.

    • Rong-wei Zhang
    • , Xiao-quan Li
    •  & Jiu-lin Du

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanism by which adult-born neurons quickly adjust olfactory bulb network functioning is not understood. Here the authors describe a novel form of structural plasticity in which mature spines relocate toward active mitral cell dendrite along spine head filopodia via AMPA and BDNF mediated signalling.

    • Vincent Breton-Provencher
    • , Karen Bakhshetyan
    •  & Armen Saghatelyan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As vesicles fuse to the plasma membrane, they form intermediate Ω-shaped structures followed by either closure of the pore or full merging with the plasma membrane. Here Wen et al. show that dynamic actin assembly provides membrane tension to promote Ω merging in neuroendocrine cells and synapses.

    • Peter J. Wen
    • , Staffan Grenklo
    •  & Ling-Gang Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microglia contribute to shaping neural circuits in the developing brain. Here, the authors show that microglial contact with pyramidal neuron dendrites induces synapse formation in the developing somatosensory cortex, and ablation of microglia reduces synaptic connections from L4 to L2/3 neurons.

    • Akiko Miyamoto
    • , Hiroaki Wake
    •  & Junichi Nabekura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protein phosphatase1 (PP1), a signalling and transcriptional regulator, and epigenetic modulator is known to be a memory suppressor. Here the authors show that memory control by PP1 involves the microRNA cluster miR-183/96/182, and that this cluster is selectively regulated during memory formation in mice.

    • Bisrat T. Woldemichael
    • , Ali Jawaid
    •  & Isabelle M. Mansuy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans as well as many other species have the ability to perceive the number of items, numerosity, but the mechanism by which this is achieved is unclear. Here the authors provide strong evidence in support of a spontaneous perception of numerosity without reliance on density and area estimation.

    • Guido Marco Cicchini
    • , Giovanni Anobile
    •  & David C. Burr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human mutations in the NDE1 gene have been associated with cortical malformations and severe microcephaly. Here, the authors show in embryonic rat brains that NDE1-depleted neural progenitors arrest at three specific cell cycle stages before mitosis, resulting in a severe decrease in neurogenesis.

    • David J. Doobin
    • , Shahrnaz Kemal
    •  & Richard B. Vallee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sleep deprivation is believed to lead to homeostatic increases in synaptic strength and reduced inducibility of associative LTP, based mainly on findings from animal studies. Here, Kuhn et al. demonstrate similar sleep-dependent synaptic plasticity changes in humans along with altered plasma BDNF levels.

    • Marion Kuhn
    • , Elias Wolf
    •  & Christoph Nissen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of context on value-based choice is well established but the neural correlates associated with this remain poorly understood. Here the authors perform fMRI in human subjects and find that the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra are associated with the degree of influence of context on choice behaviour.

    • Francesco Rigoli
    • , Karl J. Friston
    •  & Raymond J. Dolan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drift diffusion models (DDM) are fundamental to our understanding of perceptual decision-making. Here, the authors show that DDM can implement optimal choice strategies in value-based decisions but require sufficient knowledge of reward contingencies and collapsing decision boundaries with time.

    • Satohiro Tajima
    • , Jan Drugowitsch
    •  & Alexandre Pouget

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are two forms of extinction learning, which are vital for adaptive behaviour: simple extinction, when an expected outcome fails to occur, and overexpectation, when an exaggerated expectation is in conflict with the actual outcome. Iordanova et al.show that both forms of extinction learning have a common neural substrate in the amygdala.

    • Mihaela D. Iordanova
    • , Mickael L. D. Deroche
    •  & Geoffrey Schoenbaum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Purinergic receptor activation by extracellular ATP in the dorsal horn contributes to neuropathic pain, but which cell types release ATP in this context is not known. The authors show in a mouse model of neuropathic pain that ATP is released by dorsal horn neurons, a process requiring the vesicular nucleotide transporter, VNUT.

    • Takahiro Masuda
    • , Yui Ozono
    •  & Kazuhide Inoue

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Male pheromones cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA) and (Z)-7-Tricosene (7-T) mediate chemical mate-guarding in female D. melanogaster. Here, Laturney and Billeter show that females actively eject cVA from their reproductive tract post-copulation, and that cVA in concert with 7-T can reduce female attractiveness post-mating.

    • Meghan Laturney
    •  & Jean-Christophe Billeter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether and how birds sleep during long-distance flights has remained a mystery. Here, Rattenborg and colleagues show for the first time that frigatebirds can sleep during flight, but do so in remarkably small amounts.

    • Niels C Rattenborg
    • , Bryson Voirin
    •  & Alexei L. Vyssotski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Short-term memories (STM) can become long-term memories when occurring alongside novel experiences. Here, the authors investigate the neural mechanisms behind such 'behavioural tagging' and find STM neural populations are preferentially incorporated into the ensembles encoding novel experiences.

    • Masanori Nomoto
    • , Noriaki Ohkawa
    •  & Kaoru Inokuchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Past experiences and future predictions both shape our decisions. Here, the authors trained participants in a foraging task in which reward rates varied systematically over time and find the dACC tracks both recent and past reward rates, leading to opposing effects on decisions about whether to stay or leave a reward environment.

    • Marco K. Wittmann
    • , Nils Kolling
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alcohol abuse is a risk factor for acute respiratory distress syndrome, flooding of the lungs due to compromised barrier function. Here the authors report that alcohol upregulates claudin-5 that is then recruited to tight junctions in alveolar epithelial cells, causing the displacement of claudin-18 from ZO-1 and diminished barrier function.

    • Barbara Schlingmann
    • , Christian E. Overgaard
    •  & Michael Koval

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biological activity can be photoswitched by light-regulated drugs, but so far only diffusible ligands have been shown to work on endogenous receptors. Here the authors develop targeted covalent photoswitches that couple to a protein target by ligand affinity, and demonstrate photocontrol of GluK1-expressing neurons.

    • Mercè Izquierdo-Serra
    • , Antoni Bautista-Barrufet
    •  & Pau Gorostiza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mutations in the protein LRRK2 have been associated with Parkinson's disease but little is still known about the basic functions of the protein in the brain. Here the authors show that in fruit flies, LRRK2 regulates retrograde homeostatic synaptic compensation at the larval neuromuscular junction.

    • Jay Penney
    • , Kazuya Tsurudome
    •  & A. Pejmun Haghighi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The detection limit of human vision has remained unclear. Using a quantum light source capable of generating single-photon states of light, authors here report that humans can perceive a single photon incidence on the eye with a probability above chance.

    • Jonathan N. Tinsley
    • , Maxim I. Molodtsov
    •  & Alipasha Vaziri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-photon laser scanning microscopy allows functional calcium imaging of large neuronal populations in vivo, but the recorded signals typically suffer from low signal to noise. Here the authors develop an algorithm, MLspike, which estimates action potentials from noisy calcium signals, and benchmark it against existing methods.

    • Thomas Deneux
    • , Attila Kaszas
    •  & Ivo Vanzetta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Default mode network (DMN) is strongly modulated by idiosyncratic internal processes, but its involvement in processing external stimuli is unclear. Here, Simony and colleagues use an inter-subject functional correlation approach to extract DMN states that track stimulus features and behaviour.

    • Erez Simony
    • , Christopher J Honey
    •  & Uri Hasson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The piriform cortex projects to multiple brain regions involved in diverse aspects of olfactory behavior but information about the organization of these outputs is lacking. Here the authors show that piriform neurons exhibit layer specific gene expression patterns that also define distinct projection targets.

    • Assunta Diodato
    • , Marion Ruinart de Brimont
    •  & Alexander Fleischmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The molecular mechanisms regulating myelination are only partially understood. Here authors show that Tsc1ablation in oligodendrocyte lineage activates ER stress and apoptotic programs in mice, and that enhancing PERK-eIF2α signalling partially rescues the myelination defects in Tsc1 mutants.

    • Minqing Jiang
    • , Lei Liu
    •  & Q. Richard Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In mature neurons the centrosome no longer functions as the main microtubule organizer and it is unclear how ordered microtubule arrays are assembled. Here, the authors show that in post-mitotic neurons this process depends on non-centrosomal nucleation mediated by the protein complex augmin and the nucleator gamma-TuRC.

    • Carlos Sánchez-Huertas
    • , Francisco Freixo
    •  & Jens Lüders

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mantis shrimps are known to display large pitch, yaw and torsional eye rotations. Here, the authors show that these eye movements allow mantis shrimp to orientate particular photoreceptors in order to better discriminate the polarization of light.

    • Ilse M. Daly
    • , Martin J. How
    •  & Nicholas W. Roberts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex motions can be achieved by chunking together simple movements at the cost of producing smooth, efficient trajectories. Here the authors apply a new algorithm to monkeys learning complex motor sequences and show that optimization initially occurs within small chunks that are later combined.

    • Pavan Ramkumar
    • , Daniel E. Acuna
    •  & Konrad P. Kording

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synaptic inhibition in the olfactory bulb (OB) is believed to play a role in odour processing. Here, the authors use a Pcdh21-driven Cre-line to disrupt KCC2 expression in OB mitral cells and find altered synaptic connectivity along with disrupted separation of odour-induced activity patterns.

    • Kathrin Gödde
    • , Olivier Gschwend
    •  & Thomas J. Jentsch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Laser capture microscopy (LCM) coupled with global transcriptome profiling requires relatively large numbers of cells. Here, the authors show that LCM coupled with full-length mRNA-sequencing (LCM-seq) can sequence single cells, and that LCM-seq can provide biological insight on highly similar neuronal populations.

    • Susanne Nichterwitz
    • , Geng Chen
    •  & Eva Hedlund

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anatomical segmentation of high-resolution 3D microscopy datasets is necessary to map large samples at cellular resolution. Here the authors present a pipeline for automated mouse atlas propagation (aMAP) to segment fluorescence images of the adult mouse brain and validate it against human segmentations.

    • Christian J. Niedworok
    • , Alexander P. Y. Brown
    •  & Troy W. Margrie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Episodic ataxia type 1 is caused by mutations in the potassium channel Kv1.1, which is found in cerebellar basket cells. Here, the authors use electrophysiology techniques to characterize these mutant channels, and observe that the changes result in decreased spontaneous Purkinje cell firing with no evidence for developmental compensation.

    • Rahima Begum
    • , Yamina Bakiri
    •  & Dimitri M. Kullmann

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