●Building brains from genes. Jennings, C. Nature Neuroscience April (2004) Charles Jennings reviews the book The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought by Gary Marcus.

●Autistic genius? Snyder, A. Nature 1 April (2004) Allan Snyder reviews the book Autism and Creativity: Is There a Link between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability?, edited by Uta Frith and Elisabeth Hill.

●Spinal cord alive and kicking. Barthélémy, C. & Henderson, C. E. Nature Medicine April (2004) In this News and Views article, the authors report that blocking activation of a death receptor enhances axon regeneration and functional recovery in an animal model of spinal cord injury.

●Choices, choices, choices. Chun, J. Nature Neuroscience April (2004) The observation that individual olfactory sensory neurons express only one of over a thousand odorant receptors has led to the proposal that DNA rearrangement might be involved in determining which receptor is expressed. However, this News and Views article describes new data that indicate that this is not the case.

●Development of novel targeted therapies in the treatment of malignant glioma. Rich, J. N. & Bigner, D. D. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery May (2004)

●Neural activity and the dynamics of central nervous system development. Hua, J. Y. & Smith, S. J. Nature Neuroscience April (2004). During development, the iterative formation and elimination of synapses and neuronal branches result in the formation of a much larger number of trial connections than is maintained in the mature brain. Neural activity biases this process, promoting the formation and stabilization of appropriate synaptic connections on the basis of functional activity patterns.

●Synaptic vesicles really do kiss and run. Wightman, R. M. & Haynes, C. L. Nature Neuroscience April (2004) This News and Views article discusses a new study that demonstrates that small synaptic vesicles exocytose dopamine through a flickering fusion pore.

●To move or not to move? Tamagnone, L. & Comoglio, P. M. EMBO reports April (2004) A review on the role of semaphorin signalling in cell migration, which includes a comparison of the properties of the leading edge of a migrating cell and the growth cone of an extending axon.

●Cocaine's long run. Sanna, P. P. & Koob, G. F. Nature Medicine April (2004) Locomotor activity in response to cocaine increases with repeated administration. This News and Views article reports on a clever microarray approach that is yielding clues to the basis for this heightened sensitivity.