Neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Humans are a network of complex physiological systems, but quantifying these diverse systems is a challenge. This study presents a method to show that each physiological state is characterized by a specific network structure, demonstrating a connection between network topology and function.

    • Amir Bashan
    • , Ronny P. Bartsch
    •  & Plamen Ch. Ivanov

  • Article |

    The exact speed of spoken word processing by our brain is still unknown. Using MEG to compare brain responses to words and pseudowords, MacGregoret al. show that lexical processing occurs 50 ms after acoustic information is presented, suggesting that our brain's access to word information is near-instantaneous.

    • Lucy J MacGregor
    • , Friedemann Pulvermüller
    •  & Yury Shtyrov

  • Article |

    Animals track odour trails to find food, a mate or to steer clear of danger. Bhalla and colleagues combine behavioural and physiological measurements to show that rats can track surface-borne odours with near-optimal sampling and are able to predict the path direction on encountering a bifurcation.

    • Adil Ghani Khan
    • , Manaswini Sarangi
    •  & Upinder Singh Bhalla

  • Article |

    Humans understand actions by making inferences about the person's intentions. Comparing humans with chimpanzees, this study shows that humans refer to the actors' faces more than chimpanzees do when observing goal-directed actions, indicating that humans view actions by integrating information from the actor.

    • Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi
    • , Céline Scola
    •  & Satoshi Hirata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experience-dependent plasticity and functional adaptation are thought to be restricted to the central nervous and immune systems. This study shows that long-lasting experience-dependent plasticity is a key feature of endocrine cell networks, allowing improved tissue function and hormone output following repeat demand.

    • David J. Hodson
    • , Marie Schaeffer
    •  & Patrice Mollard

  • Article |

    Food availability elicits behavioural and developmental responses. Adamset al. show that, in sea urchin larvae, food availability mediates developmental plasticity by regulating changes in arm length through dopamine signalling, a pathway widely used to mediate food-induced behavioural responses.

    • Diane K. Adams
    • , Mary A. Sewell
    •  & Lynne M. Angerer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reinforcement learning quantifies the change in behaviour in response to past experience. Using field goal attempt data from basketball, Neiman and Loewenstein demonstrate that even one failed or made attempt has an impact on subsequent attempts, showing that players overgeneralize from their most recent actions.

    • Tal Neiman
    •  & Yonatan Loewenstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most excitatory synapses in the brain are found on dendritic spines, but the mechanisms underlying synapse formation are poorly understood. Niesmannet al. investigate the role of neurobeachin in synaptogenesis, and find that its deletion leads to fewer spinous synapses and altered postsynaptic currents.

    • Katharina Niesmann
    • , Dorothee Breuer
    •  & Markus Missler

  • Article |

    The health benefits of massage therapy, like the reduction of stress, have so far only been shown in humans. This study uses modelling to demonstrate that, while visiting cleaner fish to have ectoparasites removed, the physical stimulation also acts to reduce stress in the coral reef fish,Ctenochaetus striatus.

    • Marta C. Soares
    • , Rui F. Oliveira
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the classical model, fast neuronal signalling occurs at specialized presynaptic terminals. Now, Ratnayakaet al. show that stimulus-driven fusion and recycling of synaptic vesicles can occur at axonal sites remote from conventional synapses. These findings have implications for dynamic forms of neuron–neuron communication.

    • Arjuna Ratnayaka
    • , Vincenzo Marra
    •  & Kevin Staras

  • Article |

    The microRNA miR-137 is enriched in the brain of mice and induces the differentiation of adult neural stem cells. Now, Sun and colleagues report that miR-137 negatively regulates proliferation of neurons in embryonic mice and that TLX and LSD1 cooperate to negatively regulate miR-137 expression, blocking premature differentiation.

    • GuoQiang Sun
    • , Peng Ye
    •  & Yanhong Shi

  • Review Article |

    Hair cells of the inner ear transduce vibrations of the basilar membrane into electrical signals by a process known as mechanotransduction. Recent advances in genetic and molecular tools have led to an improved understanding of mechanotransduction as Peng and colleagues summarize in this Review.

    • Anthony W. Peng
    • , Felipe T. Salles
    •  & Anthony J. Ricci

  • Article |

    Large scale synapse assays can facilitate identification of drug leads. Shiet al. develop a 'synapse microarray' technology that enables sensitive, high-throughput, quantitative screening of synaptogenic events, and use it to identify novel histone deacetylase inhibitors that enhance synaptogenesis.

    • Peng Shi
    • , Mark A. Scott
    •  & Mehmet Fatih Yanik

  • Article |

    Memory retrieval followed by extinction training has been shown to erase fear memories. Flavellet al. show that this approach also erases appetitive memories in rats and results from a modification of memory reconsolidation, which could be useful for the treatment of drug addiction.

    • Charlotte R. Flavell
    • , David J. Barber
    •  & Jonathan L.C. Lee

  • Article |

    In non-NMDA glutamate receptors, intersubunit contacts within agonist binding domains affect functional desensitization. Now, NMDA receptor activation, but not desensitization, is shown to involve rearrangements at the heterodimer interface, suggesting that the intersubunit contacts of NMDA and non-NMDA receptors may have distinct functional roles.

    • William F. Borschel
    • , Swetha E. Murthy
    •  & Gabriela K. Popescu

  • Article |

    Ampullary organs are involved in electroreception, but whether these are derived from placodes, thickened ectoderm, is unclear. In this study, the ampullary organs of the primitive ray-finned fish,Polyodon spathula, are shown to develop from lateral line placodes, suggesting that this is the ancestral state in bony fishes.

    • Melinda S. Modrell
    • , William E. Bemis
    •  & Clare V.H. Baker

  • Article |

    The role of phosphatidylinositol(4,5)bisphosphate in exocytosis is unclear. This study shows that inhibition of the p110δ isoform of PI3-kinase promotes a transient increase in phosphatidylinositol(4,5)bisphosphate, leading to a potentiation of exocytosis in chromaffin cells.

    • Peter J. Wen
    • , Shona L. Osborne
    •  & Frédéric A. Meunier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The paradigm of reservoir computing shows that, like the human brain, complex networks can perform efficient information processing. Here, a simple delay dynamical system is demonstrated that can efficiently perform computations capable of replacing a complex network in reservoir computing.

    • L. Appeltant
    • , M.C. Soriano
    •  & I. Fischer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Group BStreptococcuscauses meningitis in newborn infants but how the bacterium crosses the blood-brain barrier is unknown. Here, the bacterial pili adhesion molecule, PilA, is shown to bind to collagen and promote binding of the bacteria to integrins expressed on the blood-brain endothelium.

    • Anirban Banerjee
    • , Brandon J. Kim
    •  & Kelly S. Doran

  • Article |

    The development of radial progenitor cells and astroglia in the cerebral cortex depends on the microtubule cytoskeleton. Eomet al. have developed a new mouse model where the microtubules of astrocytes and radial glia cells are fluorescently tagged, facilitating the detailed study of microtubule dynamics and development in these cells.

    • Tae-Yeon Eom
    • , Amelia Stanco
    •  & E.S. Anton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drosophila melanogaster larvae demonstrate chemotaxis towards odours but their navigation mechanism is poorly understood. Using computer-vision tracking, Gomez-Marinet al.show that larvae ascend odour gradients using an active sampling strategy that is analogous to sniffing in vertebrates.

    • Alex Gomez-Marin
    • , Greg J. Stephens
    •  & Matthieu Louis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pluripotent stem cells can be generated from the somatic cells of humans and are a useful model to study disease. Here, pluripotent stem cells are made from a patient with familial Parkinson's disease, and the resulting neurons exhibit elevated levels of α-synuclein, recapitulating the molecular features of the patient's disease.

    • Michael J. Devine
    • , Mina Ryten
    •  & Tilo Kunath

  • Article |

    How retinoganglion cell axons project correctly to the superior colliculus is poorly understood. Here, projections are shown to require EphB1, EphB2 and ephrin-B1 to terminate in the medial superior colliculus, while ephrin-B2 is essential for the mapping of both dorsal and ventral axons.

    • Sonal Thakar
    • , George Chenaux
    •  & Mark Henkemeyer

  • Article |

    Male túngara frogs produce overlapping mating calls, which poses a challenge for the female frog to group and assign multiple auditory signals to the correct source. Farris and Ryan shows that, like humans, the female frogs compare and group signals using the smallest relative difference in call parameters.

    • Hamilton E. Farris
    •  & Michael J. Ryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambient levels of the neurotransmitter GABA tonically activate GABAA. Song et al.show that GABA can have both excitatory and inhibitory effects on hippocampal interneurons and find that low levels of GABA-mediated conductance are excitatory, whereas higher levels result in shunting inhibition.

    • Inseon Song
    • , Leonid Savtchenko
    •  & Alexey Semyanov

  • Article |

    Nitric oxide can be produced by nitric oxide synthase or by nitrite reduction, but whether the latter occurs inside cells is unknown. Here, the TRPV3 ion channel is shown to induce nitrite-dependent nitric oxide production in keratinocytes, where it has a role in thermosensory behaviour and wound healing.

    • Takashi Miyamoto
    • , Matt J. Petrus
    •  & Ardem Patapoutian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In animals, cryptochrome proteins are thought to be the detectors of the Earth's magnetic field, but humans have not been shown to posess mangetosensing capabilities. Foleyet al. demonstrate that the human cryptochrome protein, CRY2, when expressed in Drosophila melanogastercan mediate magnetoreception in a light-dependent manner.

    • Lauren E. Foley
    • , Robert J. Gegear
    •  & Steven M. Reppert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The vomeronasal organ detects pheromones, which are thought to activate TRPC2 channels on the surface of vomeronasal neurons. Using TRPC2 knockout mice, the authors show that urinary pheromones can also activate these neurons via calcium-activated chloride channels, suggesting a TRPC2-independent pathway for sensing pheromones.

    • SangSeong Kim
    • , Limei Ma
    •  & C. Ron Yu

  • Article |

    Acoustic communication is important for the reproductive behaviour of frogs. Using acoustic playback experiments, Shenet al. show that calls from male concave-eared frogs (Odorrana tormota) evoke vocal responses and phonotaxis from females, but the females show no ultrasonic sensitivity.

    • Jun-Xian Shen
    • , Zhi-Min Xu
    •  & Shang-Chun Fan

  • Article |

    Vocal communication is relatively common among fish: the midshipman being an example with a particularly wide dynamic range. In this paper, the authors demonstrate that different populations of hindbrain neurons are responsible for the frequency and duration of these calls.

    • Boris P. Chagnaud
    • , Robert Baker
    •  & Andrew H. Bass

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ability of synthetic amyloid β-protein to bind to prion proteins and alter synaptic plasticity has been previously reported. Here the relevance of this binding is investigated in brains of Alzheimer's disease patients and the interaction is shown to be blocked by antibodies to two distinct regions of prion proteins.

    • Darragh B. Freir
    • , Andrew J. Nicoll
    •  & John Collinge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Circadian rhythm is controlled by the suprachiasmatic nucleus and the mechanisms that control the rhythm are largely undiscovered. In this study, a G protein regulator, RGS16, is shown to be involved in the production of cyclic AMP that is required for the suprachiasmatic nucleus to maintain rhythm

    • Masao Doi
    • , Atsushi Ishida
    •  & Hitoshi Okamura

  • Article |

    Calorie restriction has been associated with increased life span and delayed decline of memory in animals, suggesting a role in neuronal plasticity. In this study, food restriction is demonstrated to enhance plasticity in the central nervous system and trigger the recovery from ocular deprivation in adulthood.

    • Maria Spolidoro
    • , Laura Baroncelli
    •  & Lamberto Maffei

  • Article |

    Pair-wise electrophysiology is difficult inCaenorhabditis elegansbecause the recordings are relatively short-lived. In this study, the authors investigate the synaptic currents associated with escape responses by immobilizing worms on a micropatterned agar substrate and stimulating neurons using channelrhodopsin-2.

    • Theodore H. Lindsay
    • , Tod R. Thiele
    •  & Shawn R. Lockery

  • Article |

    N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors mediate excitatory synaptic transmission, and those containing GluN2D subunits have an unusually long deactivation time. Vance et al. show that the conformational variability of the ligand-binding domain and the structure of the activating ligand influence deactivation time.

    • Katie M. Vance
    • , Noriko Simorowski
    •  & Hiro Furukawa

  • Article |

    The spinal V2a interneurons control left–right limb alternation during mouse locomotion, but only at high frequencies. In this study, the authors show that only half of these neurons are active during locomotion, and that they receive increasing synaptic drive to increase their activity as locomotion accelerates.

    • Guisheng Zhong
    • , Kamal Sharma
    •  & Ronald M. Harris-Warrick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the developing eye, the lens and retina are derived from different embryonic tissues, and how these two structures develop next to each other is of interest. In this study, the authors show that transforming growth factor-β secreted by neural crest cells is critical for the positioning of the lens next to the retina.

    • Timothy Grocott
    • , Samuel Johnson
    •  & Andrea Streit

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