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SFRP1, an ADAM10 inhibitor, is elevated in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Antibody-mediated neutralization of its activity stalls brain alterations and cognitive loss in AD-like mice, supporting SFRP1 as a potential target for disease therapy.
Sun et al. built a comprehensive atlas of inputs to major types of GABAergic interneurons in the prefrontal cortex of mice. Through three-dimensional reconstruction of neural morphology, the authors classified input neurons and identified novel neural circuits.
Genetic techniques to manipulate autonomic nerves in a tumor- and fiber-type-specific manner in rodent models of breast cancer reveal that sympathetic nerve denervation or parasympathetic nerve stimulation suppresses breast cancer growth and progression.
Parietal neurons encode the information gains that saccades are expected to bring for subsequent actions independently of economic utility, consistent with a boost in neural gain to facilitate the implementation of sampling policies.
Targeting genes to specific cell types is valuable for basic science and gene therapy. The authors describe a collection of AAVs containing synthetic promoters targeting a broad range of neuronal cell types in mice, non-human primates and humans.
Using a large task battery spanning motor, cognitive, social and affective domains, this functional MRI (fMRI) study provides a comprehensive functional map of the human cerebellum, along with a comparison to maps derived from anatomy and resting-state fMRI data.
People often remember visual information over brief delays while also seeing new images in their immediate visual surroundings. Areas of the brain known to process visual information are shown to juggle these memory and sensory demands.
T cell-derived interferon-γ signaling to microglia underlies spatial-learning deficits associated with West Nile virus and Zika virus via the loss of hippocampal presynaptic termini or neurons with elimination of postsynaptic termini, respectively.
Using pericyte-specific Cre and ablation mouse lines, the authors show that loss of brain pericytes leads to circulatory failure and reduced pleiotrophin causing rapid neuron loss. These findings link pericyte loss to a rapid neurodegeneration cascade.
This paper elucidates the mechanism regulating the subcellular localization of UBE3A and demonstrates that abrogation of UBE3A nuclear localization leads to electrophysiological and behavioral impairments in mice and to Angelman syndrome in humans.
Using three-dimensional correlative light and electron microscopy of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites in postmortem brains of Parkinson’s disease patients, researchers show that the major constituents are membranes rather than proteinaceous filaments.
A new study reveals that complete loss of TREM2 function or expression of the TREM2R47H Alzheimer’s disease risk variant hinders amyloid-β plaque-associated microglia, leaving peri-plaque neurites susceptible to tau seeding and spreading.
How does the hippocampus learn with only a single presentation of a stimulus? Nicola and Clopath show how interneuron networks can dilate pre-existing spike sequences during sharp waves into theta sequences for one-shot learning.
Optogenetics has revolutionized neuroscience, but intracranial illumination can cause off-target effects. Owen et al. identify a temperature-sensitive potassium current that modulates neuronal activity and behavior independent of opsin expression.
The study reports a genome-wide significant locus for cannabis use disorder, replicating in an independent cohort, and implicates CHRNA2, which encodes an acetylcholine receptor subunit, in the disorder by analyses of genetically regulated gene expression.
Microglia are resident immune cells of the CNS. Here the authors show that neurons communicate to microglia via activity-dependent fractalkine and ADAM10 signaling to induce removal of synapses in the brain after sensory loss.
The authors show that decreased synaptic efficacy onto raphe-projecting lateral habenula neurons supports opiate withdrawal-induced sociability deficits, and they demonstrate a role for TNF-α signaling in this process.
Gouwens et al. established a morpho-electrical taxonomy of cell types for the mouse visual cortex via unsupervised clustering analysis of multiple quantitative features from 1,938 neurons available online at the Allen Cell Types Database.
Norman-Haignere et al. report that humans but not macaque monkeys possess cortical regions with a strong preference for harmonic tones compared to noise. This species difference may be driven by the demands of speech and music perception in humans.