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Todd et al. show a daily rhythm in aggression propensity in male mice and reveal a novel polysynaptic circuit within the hypothalamus by which the central circadian clock (the suprachiasmatic nucleus) influences neurons that regulate attack behavior.
Huang et al. demonstrate that somatostatin (Sst)-expressing primary afferents are pruriceptors. In spinal cord, they show that Sst potentiates itch by disinhibition involving dynorphin-expressing spinal neurons and that Sst also suppresses pain.
Oligodendrocytes are generated in adult somatosensory cortex, but few successfully integrate to form myelin. Sensory enrichment alters myelination patterns by enhancing oligodendrogenesis rather than altering the length of existing myelin sheaths.
Severe spinal cord contusions interrupt all corticospinal input. Neuroprosthetic rehabilitation rerouted cortical command through residual reticulospinal pathways, mediating motor cortex dependent recovery of locomotion in otherwise paralyzed rats.
TDP-43 gains function due to perturbed autoregulation in a Tardbp knock-in mouse model of ALS-FTD, leading to aberrant Mapt splicing and a paucity of parvalbumin interneurons. Phenotypic heterogeneity is exploited to yield modifiers of disease.
It is unknown if myelination patterns are fixed in adults. Using label-free & fluorescence in vivo imaging, Hill et al show lifelong internode addition to partially myelinated axons, with age-related internode loss & debris accumulation in microglia.
Learning is ubiquitous in everyday life, yet it is unclear how neurons change their activity together during learning. Golub and colleagues show that short-term learning relies on a fixed neural repertoire, which limits behavioral improvement.
Qin et al show that autism-like social deficits in Shank3-deficient mice arise from β-catenin-mediated transcriptional upregulation of histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) and are persistently alleviated by brief treatment with HDAC inhibitor romidepsin.
Changing one’s mind requires revising previous decisions in light of new evidence. The authors combine a psychophysical manipulation of post-decision evidence with fMRI to isolate neural mediators of changes of mind in human prefrontal cortex.
This work demonstrates subtype-specific molecular fidelity, laminar positioning, long-distance interhemisheric connectivity and electrophysiologic circuit integration by developmentally primed, microtransplanted neurons in postnatal mouse neocortex.
The authors investigate the involvement of lymphocytes in brain development and find that B-1a cells, a subtype of B cells, promoted oligodendrogenesis by secreting IgM. Neutralizing the receptor for IgM reduced myelination in neonatal mouse brains.
By comparing the genome-wide profile of H4K16ac in AD with younger and elder controls, the authors propose a mechanism for how age is a risk factor for AD: a histone modification, whose accumulation is associated with aging, is dysregulated in AD.
Myeloid cells are critical in the pathology of inflammatory and degenerative brain diseases. The authors use single-cell mass cytometry (CyTOF) to reveal distinct characteristics in these cells in models of neural inflammation and degeneration.
Intersectional gene ablation, pharmacology & song-triggered optogenetic stimulation of VTA terminals together show a common VTA–basal ganglia circuit enabling internally and externally guided juvenile song-copying and adult pitch learning in finches.
The way spike count variability is correlated between two neurons depends on the neurons' stimulus preferences. Here the authors show that this dependency itself varies systematically with behavioral task, implying a feedback origin of correlations.
Microglia show remarkable regenerative capacity after acute depletion, which had been thought to be derived from de novo progenitors. Peng and colleagues demonstrate that the newly formed microglia are actually solely derived from residual microglia.
Using an inducible mouse model of sporadic ALS, Spiller et al. show that spinal microgliosis is not a major feature of TDP-43-triggered disease. Instead, microglia mediate TDP-43 clearance and motor recovery, suggesting a neuroprotective role in ALS.
Bloss et al. show single axons form clustered inputs onto the dendrites of hippocampal pyramidal cells in a projection-specific manner. The spatial and temporal features inherent in these connections efficiently drive dendritic depolarization.
New data reveal that the amygdala—a brain area specialized for emotion—also signals the hierarchical rank of peers in a social group. These neural signals likely mediate appropriate social and emotional behavior in many social settings.
Addiction-related behaviors are believed to result from drug-evoked synaptic changes, but their causality is unclear. The authors show that bidirectional optogenetic modifications of synaptic strength distinctly alter alcohol-seeking behavior.