Neuroscience articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    Proper functioning of the brain requires a balance between the formation of excitatory and inhibitory synapses, but how this is achieved during development is unclear. Here FGF22 and FGF7, two fibroblast growth factor cell–cell signalling molecules, are shown to promote the formation of excitatory and inhibitory synapses, respectively, through their effect on epilepsy in mice. These findings should inform other neurological and psychiatric disorders involving defects in synapse formation.

    • Akiko Terauchi
    • , Erin M. Johnson-Venkatesh
    •  & Hisashi Umemori

  • Editorial |

    Rats turn out to be surprisingly useful for research on cognition. But if the goal is to understand the human brain and its many disorders, then primate studies remain essential.

  • Books & Arts |

    The latest collaborative artwork from neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach and artist Annie Cattrell reveals — and revels in — sensory dialogues in the brain, explains Martin Kemp.

    • Martin Kemp

  • News Feature |

    Studying primates is the only way to understand human cognition — or so neuroscientists thought. But there may be much to learn from rats and mice, finds Alison Abbott.

    • Alison Abbott

  • Article |

    Neurotransmitter:Na+ symporters (NSS) remove neurotransmitters from the synapse in a reuptake process that is driven by the Na+ gradient. Here, single-molecule fluorescence imaging assays have been combined with molecular dynamics simulations to probe the conformational changes that are associated with substrate binding and transport by a prokaryotic NSS homologue, LeuT. The findings are interpreted in the context of an allosteric mechanism that couples ion and substrate binding to transport.

    • Yongfang Zhao
    • , Daniel Terry
    •  & Jonathan A. Javitch

  • Letter |

    The enzyme inositol polyphosphate phosphatase 4A (INPP4A) removes phosphate groups from phosphatidylinositol-3,4-bisphosphate, a key cellular lipid. Here, a crucial role for INPP4A in maintaining the integrity of the brain is described. Mice that lack this enzyme suffer from neurodegeneration in the striatum of the brain, as well as severe involuntary movements. When present, INPP4A protects neurons from a particular type of cell death.

    • Junko Sasaki
    • , Satoshi Kofuji
    •  & Takehiko Sasaki

  • News Feature |

    Systems neuroscientists are pushing aside their electrophysiology rigs to make room for the tools of 'optogenetics'. Lizzie Buchen reports from a field in the process of reinvention.

    • Lizzie Buchen

  • Letter |

    Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a disorder characterized by the degeneration of motor neurons. About 10% of cases are familial, but the mutations identified in these families account for only 20–30% of such cases. Here a new set of mutations in familial ALS is found — in the gene encoding optineurin. Given the effect of optineurin mutations on the NF-κB protein, it is suggested that inhibiting NF-κB might be useful in treating ALS.

    • Hirofumi Maruyama
    • , Hiroyuki Morino
    •  & Hideshi Kawakami

  • Article |

    A common anatomical feature of the sensory cortex in many species is that neurons with similar features cluster into vertically orientated domains spanning all layers of the cortex. Moreover, neurons in one domain modulate neurons in neighbouring domains through horizontal connections. A combination of techniques has now been used to show that such horizontal projections suppress layers of cortex devoted to processing inputs, but facilitate layers devoted to outputs.

    • Hillel Adesnik
    •  & Massimo Scanziani

  • News & Views |

    The neocortex of the mammalian brain mediates functions such as sensory perception and ultimately consciousness and language. The spread of local signals across large distances in this brain region has now been clarified.

    • Dirk Feldmeyer

  • News and Views Q&A |

    The ability to perceive Earth's magnetic field, which at one time was dismissed as a physical impossibility, is now known to exist in diverse animals. The receptors for the magnetic sense remain elusive. But it seems that at least two underlying mechanisms exist — sometimes in the same organism.

    • Kenneth J. Lohmann

  • Letter |

    Millions of pounds per year are spent on various 'brain-training' programs; however, the efficacy and performance of these training regimes is still unclear. In collaboration with the BBC, a six-week online study of brain training was conducted. Although improvements were observed in the specific tasks used for training, in the authors' view there was no evidence that these improvements transferred to other untrained cognitive tasks.

    • Adrian M. Owen
    • , Adam Hampshire
    •  & Clive G. Ballard

  • Letter |

    Before mating, a yeast cell must detect a partner cell that is close enough and expresses sufficiently large amounts of a sex pheromone. The mating decision is an all-or-none, switch-like response to pheromone concentration. It is now shown that this decision involves the competition of one kinase and one phosphatase enzyme for multiple phosphorylation sites on a 'scaffold' protein. The results should prompt a re-evaluation of the role of related signalling molecules that have been implicated in cancer.

    • Mohan K. Malleshaiah
    • , Vahid Shahrezaei
    •  & Stephen W. Michnick

  • Letter |

    GABAB receptors are the G-protein-coupled receptors for γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. Here, functional proteomics is used to show that GABAB receptors in the brain are complexes of GABAB1, GABAB2 and members of a subfamily of KCTD proteins. The KCTD proteins increase the potency of agonists and markedly alter the G-protein signalling of the receptors, suggesting that they determine the pharmacology and kinetics of the receptor response.

    • Jochen Schwenk
    • , Michaela Metz
    •  & Bernhard Bettler

  • Article |

    Regulatory proteins bind non-coding DNA either at promoters (near to a gene's transcription start site) or at enhancers (far away). Binding at enhancers helps to bring the transcription enzyme RNA polymerase to promoters. Here, studies of some 12,000 enhancers that respond to electrical activity in neurons show that binding to enhancers also brings the polymerase to the enhancers themselves, where it transcribes a novel class of non-coding RNAs. Enhancers may thus be more similar to promoters than hitherto appreciated.

    • Tae-Kyung Kim
    • , Martin Hemberg
    •  & Michael E. Greenberg

  • Article |

    The brain is apt to sort sensory stimuli into discrete perceptual categories, but the neuronal activity behind this capability has been unclear. Here, the problem has been investigated by presenting zebrafish with different concentrations or types of odours. The results show that the activity of neuronal populations in the olfactory bulb is largely insensitive to changes in odour concentration, but that morphing one odour into another produces abrupt transitions between odour representations.

    • Jörn Niessing
    •  & Rainer W. Friedrich

  • Editorial |

    Much of what people know about science is learned informally. Education policy-makers should take note.

  • Books & Arts |

    Daniel J. Levitin enjoys a book that explains how rhythm, pitch and timbre are combined, and why the most delightful compositions balance predictability and surprise.

    • Daniel J. Levitin

  • Letter |

    It is generally accepted that specific neuronal circuits in the brain's cortex drive behavioural execution, but the relationship between the performance of a task and the function of a circuit is unknown. Here, this problem was tackled by using a technique that allows many neurons within the same circuit to be monitored simultaneously. The findings indicate that enhanced correlated activity in specific ensembles of neurons can identify and encode specific behavioural responses while a task is learned.

    • Takaki Komiyama
    • , Takashi R. Sato
    •  & Karel Svoboda

  • Letter |

    Animals must detect water in their environment to stay alive, but the molecular basis for water detection has been unclear. Here the essential mediators of water-sensing and drinking in fruitflies have been identified: an ion channel of the degenerin/epithelial sodium channel family, and the sensory neurons that make it.

    • Peter Cameron
    • , Makoto Hiroi
    •  & Kristin Scott

  • News & Views |

    A neuron can receive thousands of inputs that, together, tell it when to fire. New techniques can image the activity of many inputs, and shed light on how single neurons perform computations in response.

    • Nicholas J. Priebe
    •  & David Ferster

  • Letter |

    A deletion on human chromosome 22 (22q11.2) is one of the largest genetic risk factors for schizophrenia. Mice with a corresponding deletion have problems with working memory, one feature of schizophrenia. It is now found that these mice also show disruptions in synchronous firing between neurons of the prefrontal cortex and of the hippocampus, an electrophysiological phenomenon that has been linked to learning and memory and which is also thought to be disrupted in schizophrenia patients.

    • Torfi Sigurdsson
    • , Kimberly L. Stark
    •  & Joshua A. Gordon

  • Article |

    Many sensory neurons in the mammalian cortex are tuned to specific stimulus features — for example, some fire only when horizontal bars move from top to bottom in the visual field. But it has been unclear whether such tuning is encoded in a neuron's inputs, or whether the neuron itself computes its response. Here, a new technique for visualizing and mapping sensory inputs to the dendrites of neurons in the mouse visual cortex has shown that each neuron makes its own 'decision' as to the orientation preference of its output.

    • Hongbo Jia
    • , Nathalie L. Rochefort
    •  & Arthur Konnerth

  • Letter |

    Although several synaptic adhesion proteins have been identified as genetic risk factors in schizophrenia, it is unclear as to what role they play in disease progression. Here, it is shown that two such proteins — neuregulin 1 and its receptor ErbB4 — function to regulate the connectivity of specific cortical circuits. The study not only implicates these proteins in the wiring of inhibitory synapses, about which little is known, but also provides a new perspective on their involvement in schizophrenia.

    • Pietro Fazzari
    • , Ana V. Paternain
    •  & Beatriz Rico

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The genome of the zebra finch — a songbird and a model for studying the vertebrate brain, behaviour and evolution — has been sequenced. Comparison with the chicken genome, the only other bird genome available, shows that genes that have neural function and are implicated in the cognitive processing of song have been evolving rapidly in the finch lineage. Moreover, vocal communication engages much of the transcriptome of the zebra finch brain.

    • Wesley C. Warren
    • , David F. Clayton
    •  & Richard K. Wilson

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