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A new study shows that the enzyme monoamine oxidase funnels a byproduct of dopamine metabolism, H2O2, directly into the mitochondrial electron transport chain, stimulating ATP production. This alternative energy pathway may protect dopaminergic neurons from the toxicity induced by dopamine metabolism while supporting phasic firing.
Humans and animals are drawn to others in an altered affective state, whether sad or happy. A study published in this issue of Nature Neuroscience shows that a specific population of interneurons in the brain is critical for discrimination of affective states.
Framed around the potential use of microglia as new cellular therapies for brain disease, Bennett and Bennett review new discoveries about the effects of developmental origin and environmental signals on brain macrophage identity and function.
Behavior is more than the motor outputs that we can directly measure. Here Calhoun and colleagues devise a novel method for inferring the internal states that affect how fruit flies process sensory information during courtship, providing a new framework for understanding the neural encoding of behavior.
Reitich-Stolero and Paz examined multineuron correlates of Pavlovian learning in the primate amygdala. They found repeating patterns of activity across neurons that may mediate synaptic-level plasticity mechanisms. This extends the notion of replay, often examined relative to navigation in the hippocampus, to aversive learning in the amygdala.
This paper offers a primer on transcriptional enhancers in the CNS, using examples of enhancer regulation in the maturing brain and the role of non-coding variation in brain disorders to explain the concepts emerging from functional neurogenomics.
Malignant gliomas recapitulate steps in neurodevelopment to form organ-like structures. Jung et al. review how neuroscience can provide novel insights into glioma biology, and how these insights might be used for future therapeutic approaches.
A deep network is best understood in terms of components used to design it—objective functions, architecture and learning rules—rather than unit-by-unit computation. Richards et al. argue that this inspires fruitful approaches to systems neuroscience.
Unexpected experiences often lead to strong memories. A new study by Krabbe and Paradiso et al. shows that vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)-expressing interneurons of the basolateral amygdala control associative learning and memory formation by gating aversive stimuli scaled by their unexpectedness.
Two new studies demonstrate the importance of awake imaging to investigate microglia–neuron interactions. These studies show that microglial dynamics are influenced by neuronal activity, and they provide evidence that norepinergic signaling plays an important role in this effect.
Many studies focus on neural associations yet understanding the brain will ultimately depend on discovering the causal interactions underlying its functionality. Moving from association to causation will thus be essential for advancing neuroscience.
Astrocytes are crucial contributors to brain homeostasis. Yet the lack of ad hoc analysis tools has prevented in-depth characterization of astrocyte-derived signals. In a new study, the authors present an image-analysis toolbox that captures the complexity of astrocyte activity and enables our understanding of astrocytic physiology.
Using data from 45,615 people, Kaufmann et al. compare the gaps between brain age and chronological age in a number of brain disorders and study the relationship of these gaps with genetics. Their research shows that the brains of individuals with a range of different brain disorders, such as dementia and schizophrenia, are aging faster than normal.
We express decisions through movements, but not all movements matter to the outcome. For example, fidgeting is a common yet ‘nonessential’ behavior we exhibit. New evidence suggests that this non-task-related movement profoundly shapes neural activity in expert mice performing tasks.
When crossing the street, you can ignore the color of oncoming cars, but for hailing a taxi color is important. How do we learn what to represent neurally for each task? Here, Niv summarizes a decade of work on representation learning in the brain.
In this Review, Likhtik and Johansen discuss how modern neuroscience techniques applied to the study of emotional learning reveal new principles for how neuromodulatory systems regulate distributed brain circuits and flexibly adjust behaviour.
This paper first reviews the work on brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) for restoring lost motor function and then provides a perspective on how BMIs could extend to the new frontier of restoring lost emotional function in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Memory retrieval involves interactions between internal or external cues and stored engrams. Identification of engrams in mice permits examination of these interactions at the level of neural ensembles. This review highlights emerging findings.
The authors review the most recent measurement and manipulation approaches that enable links between synaptic plasticity and learning to be examined, and they propose potential future approaches to tackle this endeavor.
In this Review, Miller and Sahay discuss how adult-born neurons recruit inhibitory microcircuits to support hippocampal memory indexing and pattern separation.
