Neuroscience articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    Benzodiazepines, such as valium, are used both in clinics and for recreational purposes, but lead to addiction in some individuals. Addictive drugs increase the levels of dopamine and trigger synaptic adaptations in the mesolimbic reward system, but the neural basis for the addictive nature of benzodiazepines remains elusive. Here, they are shown to increase firing of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area through GABAA receptor activation in nearby interneurons.

    • Kelly R. Tan
    • , Matthew Brown
    •  & Christian Lüscher

  • News & Views |

    Chronic drug use can lead to addiction, which is initiated by specific brain circuits. The mystery of how one class of drugs, the benzodiazepines, affects activity in this circuitry has finally been solved.

    • Arthur C. Riegel
    •  & Peter W. Kalivas

  • Muse |

    The finding that religion scarcely influences moral intuition undermines the idea that a godless society will be immoral, says Philip Ball. Whether it 'explains' religion is another matter.

    • Philip Ball

  • Books & Arts |

    When Rodrigo Quian Quiroga visited Jorge Luis Borges's private library, he found annotated books that bear witness to the writer's fascination for memory and neuroscience.

    • Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

  • Article |

    Insect vectors of diseases locate their animal hosts through olfaction via largely unknown molecular processes. Here the 'empty neuron' system of genetically engineered Drosophila is used to assign specific odorants to the entire repertoire of olfactory receptors of the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. The results illuminate ecological and neurobiological differences between mosquitoes and fruitflies and provide new potential molecular targets to boost the struggle against insect–borne diseases.

    • Allison F. Carey
    • , Guirong Wang
    •  & John R. Carlson

  • Letter |

    Mammals are repelled by large concentrations of salts but attracted to low concentrations of sodium. In mice, the latter behaviour can be blocked by the ion channel inhibitor amiloride. Here, mice have been produced lacking the drug's target sodium channel, ENaC, specifically in taste receptor neurons. It is confirmed that sodium sensing, like the four other taste modalities (sweet, sour, bitter and umami), is mediated by a dedicated 'labelled line'.

    • Jayaram Chandrashekar
    • , Christina Kuhn
    •  & Charles S. Zuker

  • Article |

    Mouse and human fibroblasts can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state with a combination of four transcription factors. Here, mature differentiated cells are directed, via a combination of a few transcription factors (distinct from those described for generating iPS cells), to form functional neurons in vitro, without having to revert the fibroblasts to an embryonic state.

    • Thomas Vierbuchen
    • , Austin Ostermeier
    •  & Marius Wernig

  • News |

    The positioning of people's photos affects how attractive and powerful they seem to be.

    • Matt Kaplan

  • Letter |

    Echolocation is usually associated with bats. Many echolocating bats produce signals in the larynx, but a few species produce tongue clicks. Here, studies show that in all bats that use larynx-generated clicks, the stylohyal bone is connected to the tympanic bone. Study of the stylohyal and tympanic bones of a primitive fossil bat indicates that this species may have been able to echolocate, despite previous evidence to the contrary, raising the question of when and how echolocation evolved in bats.

    • Nina Veselka
    • , David D. McErlain
    •  & M. Brock Fenton

  • Opinion |

    People's grasp of scientific debates can improve if communicators build on the fact that cultural values influence what and whom we believe, says Dan Kahan.

    • Dan Kahan

  • Letter |

    Rodents have an orientation map of their surroundings, produced and updated by a network of neurons in the entorhinal cortex known as 'grid cells'. However, it is currently unknown whether humans encode their location in a similar manner. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans, a macroscopic signal representing a subject's position in a virtual reality environment is now detected that meets the criteria for defining grid-cell encoding.

    • Christian F. Doeller
    • , Caswell Barry
    •  & Neil Burgess

  • Letter |

    The involvement of astroglia in long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission remains controversial. Clamping internal Ca2+ in individual astrocytes in the CA1 area of the hippocampus is now shown to block LTP induction at nearby excitatory synapses through an effect on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. This LTP blockade can be reversed by exogenous D-serine, normally released in a Ca2+-dependent manner from astrocytes.

    • Christian Henneberger
    • , Thomas Papouin
    •  & Dmitri A. Rusakov

  • News & Views |

    Memory formation is known to occur at the level of synaptic contacts between neurons. It therefore comes as a surprise that another type of brain cell, the astrocyte, is also involved in establishing memory.

    • Mirko Santello
    •  & Andrea Volterra

  • News & Views |

    Parent birds commonly face the problem of distinguishing their own brood from foreign chicks. Learnt chick-recognition evolves only when parents do not mistakenly learn to reject their own young.

    • Rebecca Kilner

  • Letter |

    If the activity of genetically specified neurons is silenced in a temporally precise fashion, the roles of different cell classes in neural processes can be studied. Members of the class of light-driven outward proton pumps are now shown to mediate powerful, safe, multiple-colour silencing of neural activity. The gene archaerhodopsin-3 (Arch) enables near 100% silencing of neurons in the awake brain when virally expressed in the mouse cortex and illuminated with yellow light.

    • Brian Y. Chow
    • , Xue Han
    •  & Edward S. Boyden

  • News & Views |

    Retrieving a memory initiates a window of vulnerability for that memory. Simple behavioural methods can modify distressing memories during this window, eliminating fear reactions to traumatic reminders.

    • Gregory J. Quirk
    •  & Mohammed R. Milad

  • News & Views |

    Retrieving a memory initiates a window of vulnerability for that memory. Simple behavioural methods can modify distressing memories during this window, eliminating fear reactions to traumatic reminders.

    • Gregory J. Quirk
    •  & Mohammed R. Milad

  • Authors |

    Training helps people forget some fearful memories.

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