Review Articles in 2011

Aaron Beck's influential cognitive model of depression posits that cognitive biases lead to depressive symptoms. In this Review, Beck and colleagues discuss neuroimaging findings suggesting that both top-down and bottom-up neural mechanisms underlie these biases, and propose a neurobiological architecture of the cognitive model of depression.

The number of individual types of molecules that are involved in synaptic transmission is small enough for the stochastic (random) properties of molecular events to be non-negligible. Triller and colleagues discuss the implications of stochastic reactive and diffusive molecular behaviours for synaptic transmission.

Macrophages and microglia are major contributors to the inflammatory response that follows spinal cord trauma. Modulating the activation of these cells to harness their beneficial protective and reparative properties could be key for treating spinal cord injuries.

Alcohol-related violence is a widespread societal problem. Heinz and colleagues review animal and human studies that have provided insights into the links between acute and chronic alcohol intake and aggression, and into the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to individual variability in alcohol-induced aggression.

Computational models can aid the study of complex biological processes such as neural development. In this Review, van Ooyen describes theoretical models of each of the major stages of neural development, and discusses their influence on the current understanding of the mechanisms that govern these events.

Despite protective barriers, the nervous system is vulnerable to the invasion of pathogens. This Review discusses mechanisms by which microbes enter the nervous system and cause persistent or life-threatening infections.

Neuronal communication in the cerebellum occurs through rate coding, but recent evidence indicates that spatiotemporal spiking patterns also contain information. De Zeeuw and colleagues review the evidence for such spatiotemporal coding in the cerebellum, and show that the two coding mechanisms together may enable precise control of cerebellar output.

Although ubiquitylation is well known for its role in targeting proteins for degradation, more recently — as discussed by Kawabe and Brose — it has emerged that this process is vitally important in the regulation of the cell signalling processes that control numerous aspects of neuronal development.

Notch signalling is well known for its role in development, but here, Rakic and colleagues describe emerging aspects of Notch signalling in many processes in the adult brain. They propose that context-dependent crosstalk between Notch and various other signalling pathways underlies this pleiotropy.

Lipid dysregulation seems to be crucially involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Not only do a wide variety of lipids participate in the regulation of amyloidogenesis but amyloid-β itself regulates lipid metabolism, thus offering novel opportunities for therapeutic intervention.

Various proposals have defined the dorsal visual stream as a 'Where' or 'How' pathway. Synthesizing data from anatomical and functional studies, Mishkin and colleagues propose that in the posterior parietal cortex, three different pathways emerge from the dorsal stream, each supporting a different aspect of spatial processing.

Vesicular glutamate transporters are expressed not only in glutamate neurons but also in monoamine, acetylcholine and, intriguingly, GABA neurons. Trudeau and colleagues discuss the role of these transporters in glutamate co-release and vesicular synergy — a process leading to enhanced packaging of the 'primary' transmitter.

The growth cones of developing axons are guided towards their targets by gradients of cues. Kamiguchi and colleagues propose a mechanism for this process whereby cues trigger an alteration in the balance of endocytosis and exocytosis on one side of the growth cone, biasing the direction of turning.

In this Review, Shackman and colleagues challenge claims that emotion and cognition are functionally segregated in the cingulate cortex. They show that negative affect, pain and cognitive control activate a common subdivision of the cingulate cortex, and propose that this region uses punishment-related information to optimize goal-directed behaviour.

Faithful transmission of information within and between neural circuits is underpinned by tight coupling between exocytosis and endocytosis at individual synapses. In this Review, Haucke and colleagues unravel the mechanisms underlying this coupling and explain how it is crucial to robust neurotransmission.

Mechanotransduction — the conversion of a mechanical stimulus into an electrical signal — underpins the senses of touch, pain and proprioception. Delmas and colleagues review emerging data on the characteristics of mechanosensitive currents in mammalian sensory neurons and discuss candidate proteins that might constitute the underlying mechanotransducer channels.

In the adult brain, neurogenesis occurs in a few restricted niches. However, the activation of glia following brain injury can endow these cells with stem cell properties. Götz and colleagues discuss how a more detailed knowledge of reactive gliosis might enable the stem cell potential of glia to be harnessed.

Thathiah and De Strooper discuss the complex interactions between G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and the amyloid-β cascade in Alzheimer's disease, highlighting new targets for drug discovery efforts and the need for a multi-target approach to therapy.

In this Review, Fell and Axmacher discuss how phase synchronization of neural oscillations facilitates neural communication and plasticity, and thereby promotes memory processes. They propose that working memory and long-term memory might interact through phase–phase and phase–amplitude synchronization in the hippocampus.