EMERGING IDEAS IN NEURAL SCIENCE

Nature Neuroscience

• Sneaky politics
  Scientists need to mobilize to combat changing tactics by animal rights activists.
• Ganglionic eminence graft pre-eminence in epilepsy
  Intrahippocampal transplantation of inhibitory interneuron progenitors derived from the medial ganglionic eminence markedly ameliorates the seizure activity and neurobehavioral deficits typically observed in the pilocarpine mouse model of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, even if the cells are engrafted after the onset of spontaneous seizures.
  Geoffrey G Murphy
• Learning to deal with life's ups and downs
  A study shows that circadian glucocorticoid oscillations have dual roles in dendritic spine plasticity, controlling spine formation and elimination through distinct mechanisms important for motor learning.
  Scott J Russo
• The uncertainty of it all
  Two studies in this issue report the discovery of different types of uncertainty signals in little-studied, but critical, regions of the forebrain: decision confidence in the pulvinar and reward risk in the anterodorsal septum.
  Adam Kepecs
• Fixate and stabilize: shall the twain meet?
  A study reports that fixation and optomotor responses in Drosophila rely on parallel neural processing of position and motion information, but interact at the behavioral level.
  Laurent Goffart
• Convergent cortical innervation of striatal projection neurons
  Prior anatomical studies have suggested that intratelencephalic (IT) and pyramidal tract (PT) cortical neurons project to different populations of striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs). Here, the authors find using optogenetic stimulation that both IT and PT neurons project to both direct and indirect pathway SPNs.
  D James Surmeier
• Oligodendrocyte progenitors balance growth with self-repulsion to achieve homeostasis in the adult brain
  In this study, the authors use time-lapse in vivo two-photon imaging to elucidate the dynamics of NG2+ gial cells in the cortex. They find that proliferation and migration of these cells is intimately linked to the loss of neighboring cells to cell death or differentiation.
  Dwight E Bergles
• Overexpression of Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule impairs precise synaptic targeting
  In this study, the authors show that Dscam, a gene that has been implicated in Down syndrome, is targeted by the translation suppressor and Fragile X–linked protein FMRP. Loss of FMRP or overexpression of Dscam in Drosophila led to synaptic targeting errors and an impairment in perception of mechanical stimuli.
  Brian E Chen