Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
This study demonstrates that several microRNA species co-regulate the levels of the ataxin1, a gene implicated in the development of spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1). With ataxin1 dosage contributing to disease severity, this regulation pathway may influence SCA1 progression.
Structural sexual dimorphism in the developing nervous system can lead to functional differences in physiology and behavior. Postnatal, gender-based differences in cell number were presumed to be passively maintained, but here, Ahmed et al. reveal an active mechanism modulated by sex hormones that maintains different numbers of cells in sexually dimorphic brain areas.
The central serotonergic system is an important modulator of neural circuitry that regulates behavior and emotion state of an animal. Current study from Lerch-Haner et al. shows that mutant female mice with defective serotonergic neurons exhibit gross maternal neglect resulting in offspring death, and that this defect can be rescued by expression of a homologous gene from human.
Neurons expressing Agouti-related protein (AgRP) and neuropeptide Y (NPY) in the hypothalamus are involved in regulation of feeding and body weight, but genetic disruption of AgRP and NPY have little effect on energy homeostasis. A new study from Tong et al. shows that the energy homeostasis function is mediated through their GABAergic transmission.
Repetition suppression, the reduction in neural activity with repeated stimuli, is usually thought to be a result of automatic sensory processes. This study instead finds that this reduction results from high stimulus predictability, a more 'top-down' process.
Drosophila larvae maintain a very precise ability to sense small environmental temperature differences, influencing thermotactic behavior. Kwon et al. suggest a requirement for TRPA1 activation in mediating this sensitivity, but with channel responses arising from a PLC-based signaling cascade, not by direct thermal activation of the channel.
Chemosensory cues are important indicators during Drosophila courtship. This study reveals that disrupting the expression of a gustatory receptor (Gr32a) causes flies to exhibit enhanced courtship behavior towards males and equivalent reactions to mated or virgin females, establishing Gr32a as a receptor for inhibitory courtship pheromones.
Corticosterone triggers increased AMPA receptor membrane mobility and surface expression, according to a new study by Groc and colleagues. This mechanism helps to explain the observed modulation of synaptic plasticity and strength induced by this stress hormone.
Although the existence of face-selective processing in the temporal lobes is well-accepted, the existence of similar patches in frontal cortex is debated, with contradictory evidence. This study used fMRI in alert macaques to identify three face-selective regions in ventral prefrontal cortex, one of which was strongly lateralized to the right hemisphere.
The physical properties of nematode neurons have led many to believe that neuronal signals in worms are passively propagated. Here, the authors present evidence for the production of regenerative action potentials in some nematode neurons, which can participate in the control of a bistable state.
People can moderate their aversive emotional reactions. Delgado and colleagues now show that people can also downregulate expectations of reward, which can at times be maladaptive (for example, drug cravings), and that this results in an attenuation of the physiological and neural correlates of reward expectation.
The peptide hormone ghrelin has previously been linked to the regulation of metabolism. This study in mice finds that increasing levels of ghrelin, either through subcutaneous injections or calorie restriction, has an anxiolytic and antidepressive effect. This reveals a previously unknown function for ghrelin.
Greenberg and colleagues directly compare the activity of cortical neurons in awake and subsequently anesthetized rats, finding that anesthesia modulates the relationship between firing rate and correlation, and suggesting that brain activity during wakefulness cannot be inferred from data gathered under anesthesia.
In synaptically connected layer 4 and 2/3 cells, NMDA receptors are required postsynaptically for the expression of LTP and presynaptically for the expression of LTD.
TRPC6 promotes the formation of synapses in a CaMKIV-CREB–dependent manner. TRPC6-expressing transgenic animals showed increased numbers of spines and demonstrated enhanced learning on behavioral tasks.
Sound detection in mammalian cochlear involves a mechanoelectrical sensory transduction whose signal can be amplified by the outer hair cells in the organ of Corti. By recording the mechanical responses of cochlear taken from genetically modified mice, the current study provides evidence for hair-cell somatic motility as the underlying mechanism of cochlear amplification.