Neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theta range oscillations in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are associated with conditioned fear. Here, the authors use exogenous oscillatory stimulation of the BLA and mPFC in mice to determine the dynamic roles of theta-range oscillatory states across conditioned fear and extinction learning.

    • Minagi Ozawa
    • , Patrick Davis
    •  & Leon Reijmers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Working in military structures implies a reduction in individual autonomy, in which agents must comply with hierarchical orders. Here, the authors show that working within such a structure is associated with a reduced sense of agency and outcome processing for junior cadets, but this relationship is absent in trained officers.

    • Emilie A. Caspar
    • , Salvatore Lo Bue
    •  & Axel Cleeremans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Life in a seasonal environment requires appropriate timing of physiological changes to survive, but how the circadian clockwork times these changes remains unclear. Here the authors show that the circadian clock genes BMAL2 and DEC1, in concert with epigenetic pathways in the pituitary, have a central role in seasonal timekeeping in mammals.”

    • S. H. Wood
    • , M. M. Hindle
    •  & A. S. I. Loudon

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Adult neurogenesis is involved in several physiological and pathological processes, however standardization for the quantification of new born neurons is lacking. Here, the authors provide guidance to improve reproducibility and rigour in cell quantification.

    • Xinyu Zhao
    •  & Henriette van Praag

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structural organization of excitatory inputs supporting spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) in dendritic spines remains unknown. Using a spine STDP protocol, the authors uncover the STDP rules for single, clustered and distributed dendritic spines in the basal dendrites of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in juvenile mice.

    • Sabrina Tazerart
    • , Diana E. Mitchell
    •  & Roberto Araya

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stein, Barbosa et al. show that anti-NMDAR encephalitis and schizophrenia are characterized by reduced serial dependence in spatial working memory. Cortical network simulations show that this can be parsimoniously explained by a reduction in NMDAR-dependent short-term synaptic potentiation in these diseases.

    • Heike Stein
    • , Joao Barbosa
    •  & Albert Compte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acute stroke causes complex, pathological, and systemic responses which remain challenging to treat. Here, the authors show that substituting the blood of stroke model mice with whole-blood from naive healthy donor mice reduces infarct volume and improves neurological deficits.

    • Xuefang Ren
    • , Heng Hu
    •  & James W. Simpkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Schulz et al. systematically benchmark performance scaling with increasingly sophisticated prediction algorithms and with increasing sample size in reference machine-learning and biomedical datasets. Complicated nonlinear intervariable relationships remain largely inaccessible for predicting key phenotypes from typical brain scans.

    • Marc-Andre Schulz
    • , B. T. Thomas Yeo
    •  & Danilo Bzdok

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons with grid firing fields are thought to play important roles in spatial cognition. Here, the authors show that in contrast to assumptions underlying current models and analyses, grid fields are modulated by local head direction; this suggests different mechanisms and new roles for grid firing.

    • Klara Gerlei
    • , Jessica Passlack
    •  & Matthew F. Nolan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Individuals with PTSD are unable to recollect contextual cues related to the trauma. Here the authors show that this contextual amnesia, associated with the inhibition of hippocampal activity, is causally involved in PTSD-like hypermnesia in mice, and that re-exposure to all trauma-related cues eliminates PTSD-like memory while promoting normal fear memory.

    • Alice Shaam Al Abed
    • , Eva-Gunnel Ducourneau
    •  & Aline Desmedt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Living in groups allows animals to decrease defenses, enabling other behaviors, but the mechanisms of safety in numbers are unknown. The authors show that fruit flies regulate freezing behavior as a function of group size and identify motion by others, and neurons that detect it, as key to this process.

    • Clara H. Ferreira
    •  & Marta A. Moita

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modulation of peripheral nervous system signalling has many applications in medicine, neurobiology and machine-man interfaces. Here the authors develop a microscale implantable device for chronic interfacing with a small diameter nerve, and show multi-week in vivo recording and control of activity.

    • Timothy M. Otchy
    • , Christos Michas
    •  & Timothy J. Gardner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Myelination by Schwann cells (SC) in the peripheral nervous system is essential for motor function, and dysregulation of SC myelination can lead to various neuropathies. Here the authors describe a critical role of CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF)-dependent chromatin reorganization in peripheral myelination and myelin regeneration after injury.

    • Jincheng Wang
    • , Jiajia Wang
    •  & Q. Richard Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One challenge that faces artificial intelligence is the inability of deep neural networks to continuously learn new information without catastrophically forgetting what has been learnt before. To solve this problem, here the authors propose a replay-based algorithm for deep learning without the need to store data.

    • Gido M. van de Ven
    • , Hava T. Siegelmann
    •  & Andreas S. Tolias

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) methylates H3K27 and suppresses RNA polymerase II transcription by promoting a closed chromatin. Here the authors identify the transcription factor Ybx1 as an interactor that regulates the binding of PRC2 to chromatin and H3K27 methylation to promote the genetic programs underlying neural lineages and neural progenitor self-renewal–differentiation choices.

    • Myron K. Evans
    • , Yurika Matsui
    •  & Jamy C. Peng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Impaired oligodendrocyte (OL) differentiation and remyelination after myelin damage in multiple sclerosis is associated with neurodegeneration. The authors show that Gsta4 is expressed during adult OL differentiation and identify it as a regulator of OL differentiation, survival, and remyelination.

    • Karl E. Carlström
    • , Keying Zhu
    •  & Fredrik Piehl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Learning skilled movements requires evolution in neural population dynamics both within and across cortical regions. Here, the authors combine simultaneous recordings of motor and premotor cortex with computational methods to show that single-trial cross-area dynamics correlate with single-trial behavior performance and skill acquisition.

    • T. L. Veuthey
    • , K. Derosier
    •  & K. Ganguly

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fatigue influences our choices to engage in physical activity. Here, the authors investigate the underlying cognitive and neuronal mechanisms by which fatigue influences decisions to exert, and show that information about motor cortical state modulates decisions to engage in physical activity.

    • Patrick S. Hogan
    • , Steven X. Chen
    •  & Vikram S. Chib

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although everyday life unfolds continuously, we tend to remember past experiences as discrete events. Here, the authors show that dynamic, pupil-linked arousal states track the encoding of such episodes, as revealed by changes in memory for the temporal order and duration of recent event sequences.

    • David Clewett
    • , Camille Gasser
    •  & Lila Davachi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Psychomotor stimulants increase dopamine levels in the striatum and promote locomotion but their effects on striatal pathways in vivo remain unclear. The authors show that cocaine increases the activity of direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons of awake mice via the orbitofrontal cortex.

    • Sebastiano Bariselli
    • , Nanami L. Miyazaki
    •  & Alexxai V. Kravitz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inhibition in spinal nociceptive pathways is weaker and more labile in lamina I —where thermal input is primarily processed— than in lamina II that encodes predominantly high threshold mechanical input. This explains why noxious thermal input makes spinal circuits prone to catastrophic sensitization.

    • Francesco Ferrini
    • , Jimena Perez-Sanchez
    •  & Yves De Koninck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We can flexibly coordinate our movements with external stimuli, but no circuit-level model exists to explain this ability. Inspired by fundamental concepts in control theory, the authors construct a modular neural circuit that captures human behavior in a wide range of temporal coordination tasks.

    • Seth W. Egger
    • , Nhat M. Le
    •  & Mehrdad Jazayeri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wing touching induces a defensive response in D. melanogaster. Here, the authors show that female flies change the defensive response during courtship and after mating. This switch is mediated by functional reconfiguration of a neural circuit in the ventral nerve cord.

    • Chenxi Liu
    • , Bei Zhang
    •  & Wei Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ALS is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of motor neurons. Here, the authors showed that reduced levels of the VSP35 subunit in the retromer complex is a conserved ALS feature and identified a new lead compound increasing retromer stability ameliorating the disease phenotype.

    • Luca Muzio
    • , Riccardo Sirtori
    •  & Gianvito Martino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    What sensory information is available for decision making? Here, using multi-alternative decisions, the authors show that a substantial amount of information from sensory representations is lost during the transformation to a decision-level representation.

    • Jiwon Yeon
    •  & Dobromir Rahnev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How can rodents make sense of the olfactory environment without supervision? Here, the authors formulate olfactory learning as an integrated Bayesian inference problem, then derive a set of synaptic plasticity rules and neural dynamics that enables near-optimal learning of odor identification.

    • Naoki Hiratani
    •  & Peter E. Latham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Severe head injury results in critical damage of blood vessels of the meninges and brain parenchyma. Here, the authors describe key pathways governing meningeal vascular regeneration following head injury, characterizing the differential roles of VEGFR2, Tie2, Dll4 and PDGFRβ signaling.

    • Bong Ihn Koh
    • , Hyuek Jong Lee
    •  & Injune Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Targeting genotype-independent abnormalities may overcome therapy resistance in glioblastoma despite intratumoral genomic heterogeneity. Here, the authors show that glioblastoma radiation resistance is promoted by purine metabolism and can be overcome by inhibitors of purine synthesis.

    • Weihua Zhou
    • , Yangyang Yao
    •  & Daniel R. Wahl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is controversy about whether placebos without deception cause real psychobiological benefits. Here, the authors show that the positive effects of placebos without deception are more than response bias by providing evidence they can reduce self-report and neural measures of emotional distress.

    • Darwin A. Guevarra
    • , Jason S. Moser
    •  & Ethan Kross

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alcohol craving can be enhanced by alcohol-associated cues and by alcohol-associated contexts. Here the authors investigate the role of the ventral tegmental area (VTA)-to-nucleus accumbens (NAc) core and VTA-to-NAc shell circuits in mediating these distinct aspects of alcohol seeking behaviour in rats.

    • Milan D. Valyear
    • , Iulia Glovaci
    •  & Nadia Chaudhri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wittmann and colleagues show that not only single outcome events but also the global reward state (GRS) impact learning in macaques; low GRS drives explorative choices. Analyses of macaque BOLD signal reveals that GRS impacts activity in the anterior insula as well as the dorsal raphe nucleus.

    • Marco K. Wittmann
    • , Elsa Fouragnan
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neuroligins are postsynaptic cell adhesion molecules that are involved in synapse function and autism spectrum disorder. The authors show that NLG2-mediated GABAergic transmission at the thalamic reticular nucleus-thalamic circuit is a common mechanism underlying epileptic seizures and ASD.

    • Feng Cao
    • , Jackie J. Liu
    •  & Zhengping Jia

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