Nature Neuroscience Contents: April 2014 Volume 17 Number 4, pp 481 - 637

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TABLE OF CONTENTS April 2014 Volume 17, Issue 4 Editorial News and Views Perspective Review Brief Communication Articles Technical Report Subscribe   Facebook   RSS   Recommend to library   Twitter   Advertisement Download the new NatureJournals app and gain access to Nature and all Nature-branded research and review journals. All news content and open access articles are free. Subscribe to additional journals in the app for just $35.99*.  *Apple exchange rates apply. Limited time offer available on all journals except Scientific Reports. iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple Inc.   Editorial Top High time for advancing marijuana research   p481 doi:10.1038/nn.3692 Marijuana use is expected to increase as its legalization spreads. With more marijuana users, we should prioritize research on this pervasive, but relatively understudied, drug. News and Views Top Following your heart   pp482 - 483 Joel S Winston and Geraint Rees doi:10.1038/nn.3677 A finding now suggests that the brain's response to heartbeats is influential in guiding reported visual experience, such that the ability to accurately report the presence or absence of a visual target is influenced by the brain's heartbeat-evoked activity. See also: Article by Park et al. So many progenitors, so little myelin   pp483 - 485 Steven A Goldman and Joana Osorio doi:10.1038/nn.3685 CNS white matter injury may cause sustained demyelination despite the persistence of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). A study suggests that dysregulated Wnt signaling disrupts self-renewal to yield OPC maturation arrest. See also: Article by Fancy et al. Dark matter of the bulb   pp485 - 487 Sasha Devore and Dmitry Rinberg doi:10.1038/nn.3684 A study now shows that granule cells deep in the olfactory bulb exhibit wildly different response dynamics depending on behavioral state, suggesting they could configure network changes across behavioral states. See also: Article by Cazakoff et al. Useful dynamic regimes emerge in recurrent networks   pp487 - 489 Vishwa Goudar and Dean V Buonomano doi:10.1038/nn.3679 The internal dynamics of recurrent cortical circuits is crucial to brain function. We now learn that simply increasing the strengths of recurrent connections shifts neural dynamics to a potentially powerful computational regime. See also: Article by Ostojic Go means green   pp489 - 490 Joseph T McGuire and Joseph W Kable doi:10.1038/nn.3680 A simple cued-approach training procedure can bias economic choices toward specific goods. It appears to work by drawing overt attention toward trained items, scaling up their judged value. See also: Article by Schonberg et al. Neuroscience JOBS of the week Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Behavioral or Cognitive Neuroscience Florida Atlantic University - FAU Faculty Research Position-Neuroscience Mayo Clinic Senior Professorial Role - Chair in Behavioural Neuroscience Odgers Berndtson PhD or Postdoc Positions in Systems Neuroscience RWTH Aachen University Medical School PostDoc in Neuroscience Tel Aviv University More Science jobs from Neuroscience EVENT Computational Neuroscience: Vision 11th–24th July 2014 Cold Spring Harbor, USA More science events from Perspective Top A solution to dependency: using multilevel analysis to accommodate nested data   pp491 - 496 Emmeke Aarts, Matthijs Verhage, Jesse V Veenvliet, Conor V Dolan and Sophie van der Sluis doi:10.1038/nn.3648 The authors examine papers in high profile journals and find that while collection of multiple observations from a single research object is common practice, such nested data are often analyzed using inappropriate statistical techniques. The authors show that this results in increased Type I error rates, and propose multilevel modelling to address this issue. Review Top Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge   pp497 - 502 Mariano Sigman, Marcela Peña, Andrea P Goldin and Sidarta Ribeiro doi:10.1038/nn.3672 It has been argued that the fundamental bridge from basic research to education is cognitive psychology, not neuroscience. Here the authors argue that brain science has much to offer education, discussing specific cases in which neuroscience has broadened our understanding of the mind in a way that is highly relevant to educational practice. Brief Communication Top Unbalanced excitability underlies offline reactivation of behaviorally activated neurons   pp503 - 505 Mika Mizunuma, Hiroaki Norimoto, Kentaro Tao, Takahiro Egawa, Kenjiro Hanaoka et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3674 The authors show that sharp-wave events recorded in mouse hippocampal slices are more likely to involve neurons that have been activated during a recent behavioral episode. The excitation/inhibition balance of the synaptic inputs received by these cells during sharp waves is biased toward excitation, suggesting a potential mechanism for their preferential recruitment into these network events. Articles Top Parallel states of pathological Wnt signaling in neonatal brain injury and colon cancer   pp506 - 512 Stephen P J Fancy, Emily P Harrington, Sergio E Baranzini, John C Silbereis, Lawrence R Shiow et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3676 Much of what we know about the signal transduction machinery of the canonical Wnt pathway comes from studying the colon, where low- versus high-activity Wnt signaling states are known to distinguish normal colon epithelium turnover from colorectal cancer. Here, Fancy et al. demonstrate that a pathological Wnt activity state akin to that in colon cancer exists in oligodendrocyte precursor cells in human neonatal white matter injury, which leads to detrimental maturation arrest of these cells. These oligodendrocyte precursors in human newborn brain injury express multiple genes in common with colon cancer, demonstrating a pathological Wnt tone in non-genetic human disease. See also: News and Views by Goldman & Osorio Mutant Huntingtin promotes autonomous microglia activation via myeloid lineage-determining factors   pp513 - 521 Andrea Crotti, Christopher Benner, Bilal E Kerman, David Gosselin, Clotilde Lagier-Tourenne et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3668 In this study, the authors show that cell-autonomous expression of mutant Huntingtin in microglia can elicit alterations in the transcriptional profile and activation state of the cells. In particular, there is an upregulation of pro-inflammatory and myeloid lineage factors and an increased ability to promote neuronal death after inflammatory insult. Palmitoylation of δ-catenin by DHHC5 mediates activity-induced synapse plasticity   pp522 - 532 G Stefano Brigidi, Yu Sun, Dayne Beccano-Kelly, Kimberley Pitman, Mahsan Mobasser et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3657 This study shows that activity-dependent palmitoylation of δ-catenin stabilizes the cell adhesion molecule N-cadherin at the excitatory synapse and that this post-translational modification is important for GluA1- and GluA2-mediated synaptic and structural plasticity. G9a influences neuronal subtype specification in striatum   pp533 - 539 Ian Maze, Dipesh Chaudhury, David M Dietz, Melanie Von Schimmelmann, Pamela J Kennedy et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3670 Changes in brain gene expression by cocaine are known to involve epigenetic machineries. The histone methyltransferase G9a is a mediator of cocaine-induced structural and behavioral plasticity in the nucleus accumbens of mouse. This study finds cocaine-induced, G9a-mediated gene repression in both direct and indirect pathway medium spiny neurons (MSNs). The study also uses cell type-specific overexpression and conditional knockout of G9a in each MSN cell type and shows that G9a influences the developmental specification of striatal MSN subtypes, which in turn affects behavioral response to cocaine. Opioids induce dissociable forms of long-term depression of excitatory inputs to the dorsal striatum   pp540 - 548 Brady K Atwood, David A Kupferschmidt and David M Lovinger doi:10.1038/nn.3652 In this study, the authors show that there are multiple forms of opioid-induced long-term depression (OP-LTD) in the dorsal striatum, each mediated by the mu, delta or kappa opioid receptor. The mu and delta OP-LTD are presynaptic and can summate, but only mu OP-LTD occludes endocannabinoid-induced LTD. Furthermore, mu OP-LTP, but not kappa or delta OP-LTP, is blocked by the analgesic oxycodone. Connexin 30 sets synaptic strength by controlling astroglial synapse invasion   pp549 - 558 Ulrike Pannasch, Dominik Freche, Glenn Dallérac, Grégory Ghézali, Carole Escartin et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3662 Astrocytes provide essential support for and modulate synaptic transmission between neurons. Here the authors show that non-channel functions of connexin 30, a gap-junction subunit, control the synaptic coverage of astroglial processes and regulate glutamate clearance, synaptic strength and memory function. Sparse, decorrelated odor coding in the mushroom body enhances learned odor discrimination   pp559 - 568 Andrew C Lin, Alexei M Bygrave, Alix de Calignon, Tzumin Lee and Gero Miesenböck doi:10.1038/nn.3660 Sparse coding is thought to facilitate pattern separation for associative memory, but behavioral evidence is scant. The authors show that in Drosophila, feedback inhibition enforces sparse odor coding in Kenyon cells, the neurons that store olfactory associations. Disrupting this sparsening mechanism impairs learned discrimination of similar, but not dissimilar, odors. Broadly tuned and respiration-independent inhibition in the olfactory bulb of awake mice   pp569 - 576 Brittany N Cazakoff, Billy Y B Lau, Kerensa L Crump, Heike S Demmer and Stephen D Shea doi:10.1038/nn.3669 The authors recorded from granule cells (GCs) in the main olfactory bulb of anesthetized and awake mice. Odor responses in GCs of awake mice were more robust and broadly tuned than under anesthesia. Unlike in anesthetized mice, odor coding in GCs in awake mice was not coupled to the respiratory cycle. See also: News and Views by Devore & Rinberg Designer receptors show role for ventral pallidum input to ventral tegmental area in cocaine seeking   pp577 - 585 Stephen V Mahler, Elena M Vazey, Jacob T Beckley, Colby R Keistler, Ellen M McGlinchey et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3664 The authors show that rostral ventral pallidum projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are activated during cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking, and DREADD inhibition of these projections blocks this behavior. In contrast, projections from the caudal ventral pallidum are necessary for cocaine-primed, but not cue-induced, reinstatement of cocaine seeking. Identification of a cellular node for motor control pathways   pp586 - 593 Ariel J Levine, Christopher A Hinckley, Kathryn L Hilde, Shawn P Driscoll, Tiffany H Poon et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3675 In this study, the authors identify a population of deep dorsal horn interneurons that receive inputs from both sensory neurons and the descending motor tracts and that can evoke activity from functionally related motor pools. These cells may represent the central node for coordinating motor output programs in the spinal cord. Two types of asynchronous activity in networks of excitatory and inhibitory spiking neurons   pp594 - 600 Srdjan Ostojic doi:10.1038/nn.3658 Here the author shows that an unstructured, sparsely connected network of model spiking neurons can display two different types of asynchronous activity: one in which an external input leads to a highly redundant response of different neurons that favors information transmission and another in which the firing rates of individual neurons fluctuate strongly in time and across neurons to provide a substrate for complex information processing. See also: News and Views by Goudar & Buonomano Neural mechanisms of dual-task interference and cognitive capacity limitation in the prefrontal cortex   pp601 - 611 Kei Watanabe and Shintaro Funahashi doi:10.1038/nn.3667 Simultaneous performance of two tasks often leads to deficits in the component tasks, an effect thought to depend on the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC). Here, the authors recorded single-neuron activities in monkey LPFC during two simultaneous tasks, providing direct neurophysiological evidence for models of dual-task interference and capacity limitation. Spontaneous fluctuations in neural responses to heartbeats predict visual detection   pp612 - 618 Hyeong-Dong Park, Stéphanie Correia, Antoine Ducorps and Catherine Tallon-Baudry doi:10.1038/nn.3671 Here, using magnetoencephalography, the authors show that in humans, neural events locked to heartbeats before stimulus onset predict the detection of a faint visual grating in the posterior right inferior parietal lobule and ventral anterior cingulate cortex, two regions with multiple functional correlates that belong to the same resting-state network. See also: News and Views by Winston & Rees Object-based attention involves the sequential activation of feature-specific cortical modules   pp619 - 624 Mircea A Schoenfeld, Jens-Max Hopf, Christian Merkel, Hans-Jochen Heinze and Steven A Hillyard doi:10.1038/nn.3656 The authors examine magnetoencephalographic recordings during relevant- and irrelevant-feature processing in a visual attention task. As participants attend to stimulus color or motion, a temporal sequence of relevant followed by irrelevant feature activations may bind an attended object's features into a unitary percept. Changing value through cued approach: an automatic mechanism of behavior change   pp625 - 630 Tom Schonberg, Akram Bakkour, Ashleigh M Hover, Jeanette A Mumford, Lakshya Nagar et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3673 The subjective values of stimuli can be changed through reward-based learning, but here the authors show that the value of food items can be modulated by the concurrent presentation of an irrelevant auditory cue to which subjects must make a motor response. The effects of this pairing lasted at least 2 months, and neuroimaging revealed increased preference-related activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex. See also: News and Views by McGuire & Kable Technical Report Top Making Drosophila lineage-restricted drivers via patterned recombination in neuroblasts   pp631 - 637 Takeshi Awasaki, Chih-Fei Kao, Ying-Jou Lee, Ching-Po Yang, Yaling Huang et al. doi:10.1038/nn.3654 In this Technical Report, the authors describe a new technique for the unambiguous lineage tracing of specific Drosophila neuroblasts. This methodology involves the use of lineage-restricted drivers and a modification to GAL4 expression such that it is now permanent and heritable to all descendant cells, directing reporter expression based on neuroblast identity rather than terminal neuronal characteristics. Top Advertisement Scientific Data: Credit where credit's due  Get credit for sharing your data! Scientific Data is now accepting Data Descriptor submissions. The Data Descriptor is designed to provide detailed descriptions of datasets: focusing on how these have been produced, by whom, and how they could be reused. 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