Reviews & Analysis

Increasing evidence indicates that some cortical neurons that send long-range projections to distant brain regions are GABAergic. In this Review, Melzer and Monyer examine recent progress in the identification and function of these neurons.

The causal role of chromatin modifications has been difficult to study in the brains of behaving animals. Yim, Teague and Nestler review locus-specific neuroepigenome-editing tools to define causal relationships between chromatin modifications and their molecular, cellular, circuit and behavioural consequences.

Satellite glial cells surround the cell bodies of neurons in peripheral ganglia and are activated by numerous types of nerve injury and inflammation. In this Review, Hanani and Spray discuss the cellular changes in these cells that contribute to four common types of pain.

The homeostatic CNS environment is maintained by the function of the blood–blood barrier and neurovascular coupling. Kaplan, Chow and Gu describe how neural and vascular activity act on one another with regard to the blood–blood barrier and neurovascular coupling.

Ageing is the main risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD), but the mechanisms connecting ageing to this disease remain incompletely understood. In this Review, Saez-Atienzar and Masliah examine whether cellular senescence may have a role in linking ageing and AD.

The human motor cortex is selectively vulnerable in numerous neurodegenerative diseases. In this Review, McColgan et al. integrate layer-specific physiology with pathobiology in the motor cortex, thereby generating hypotheses that can be tested in humans using ultra-high-resolution neuroimaging techniques.

There have been a number of recent advances in the use of transplanted cells to enable functional recovery in animal models of spinal cord injury. Fischer and colleagues review this work and describe the use of neural progenitor cell transplants to restore connectivity in key neural systems following spinal damage.

In this Perspective, Hanno Würbel and colleagues argue that a disregard for incorporating biological variation in study design is an important cause of poor reproducibility in animal research. They put the case for the use of systematic heterogenization of study samples and conditions in studies to improve reproducibility.

Historically, preclinical pain research has been dominated by studies in male subjects. Jeffrey Mogil describes recent trends towards the inclusion of male and female subjects in research and the subsequent identification of qualitative sex differences in the mechanisms of pain processing.

Models of dendrites have been instrumental in our understanding of their functions. Poirazi and Papoutsi review the major contributions of dendritic models, including those already proved or waiting to be experimentally verified, and highlight successful interactions between the modelling and experimental neuroscience communities.

Syllables play a central role in speech production and perception. In this Review, Poeppel and Assaneo outline how a simple biophysical model of the speech production system as an oscillator explains the remarkably stable rhythmic structure of spoken language.

The backpropagation of error (backprop) algorithm is frequently used to train deep neural networks in machine learning, but it has not been viewed as being implemented by the brain. In this Perspective, however, Lillicrap and colleagues argue that the key principles underlying backprop may indeed have a role in brain function.

Early processing in subcortical areas has been underemphasized in models of how perception and cognition are altered in psychiatric disorders. Here, McFadyen and colleagues review recent discoveries in how subcortical–cortical dynamics contribute to perception and higher-order cognition.

The lateral habenula (LHb) has received increasing attention in part because dysfunction of this region may play a part in several psychiatric disorders, notably depression. In this Review, Hu et al. examine the neural circuits, physiological functions and potential pathophysiological roles of the LHb.

Compulsion is a key symptom of drug addiction. In this Review, Lüscher, Robbins and Everitt integrate the neural and psychological mechanisms that underlie the transition to compulsion within a learning theory framework, highlighting the distinctions between compulsive drug taking and compulsive drug seeking.

Learning the value of stimuli and actions from others — social learning — is crucial for survival. In this review, Olsson, Knapska and Lindström discuss the neural and computational systems underlying social and self-experienced learning, and integrate this knowledge with behavioural phenomena of varying complexity.

Voltage-gated calcium channels have an essential role in the regulation of neurotransmitter release. Dolphin and Lee describe here how advances in the techniques available to study presynaptic voltage-gated calcium channels have provided insight into their composition, trafficking, regulation and contributions to presynaptic function.

Prior experience is incorporated into the brain’s predictive models of the world, enabling the accurate interpretation of and responses to new sensory information. In this Perspective, Teufel and Fletcher make the case for an important distinction between two forms of prediction that may advance our understanding of brain function.

In recent decades, our understanding of the molecules and pathways involved in the classical axon degeneration pathway, Wallerian degeneration, has been transformed. Coleman and Höke synthesize the recent developments in the field and discuss how the findings might be translated to aid the treatment of human disease.

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.