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GABAergic neurons of the dorsal raphe nucleus play a role in energy balance regulation via indirect projections to brown adipose tissue where they regulate thermogenesis.
Optopharmacology enables endogenous ligands, receptors and ion channels to be rendered sensitive to light. Paoletti, Ellis-Davies and Mourot give an overview of current optopharmacological techniques and tools and describe the neuroscientific insights they have uncovered.
The whisker sensorimotor system provides rodents with tactile information about their immediate facial environment. In this Review, Carl Petersen examines the complex neuronal circuits of the whisker-related primary somatosensory cortex and how they contribute to sensorimotor processing.
Several specialized macrophage populations reside in the structures that border the mammalian CNS, including the meninges, perivascular spaces and choroid plexus. Prinz and colleagues review the development and characteristics of these ‘CNS-associated macrophages’ and describe their proposed contributions to CNS function and disease.
A major challenge in neuroscience is the definition of neuronal types. Here, Paul and Huang give an overview of efforts to classify GABAergic cell types, and propose a framework in which cell types are transcriptionally defined communication elements with characteristic input–output properties.
