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Different defensive responses are characterized by transient behavioural and cardiac components, which are constrained by cardiovascular dynamics occurring across the duration of threat exposure.
The ability to be woken from deep sleep by a sound (such as an alarm) is shown to be mediated by a specialized glutamatergic brainstem–mediodorsal thalamic pathway.
The centrosome is crucial for the microtubule dynamics that underlie the radial migration of developing rodent neurons but is not required for axon growth.
A new study examines thalamic innervation of cortical layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons and models how this thalamic connectivity affects visual responses in these cells.
In this Journal Club, Janelle Drouin-Ouellet describes the 1989 paper that provided the first evidence for mitochondrial dysfunction in individuals with idiopathic Parkinson disease.
Spectrins are abundant cytoskeletal proteins with multifaceted roles in the nervous system whose dysfunction leads to neurological syndromes. In this review, Lorenzo et al. provide an update on the neurobiology of spectrins and the genetics of neuronal spectrinopathies, together with insights into the pathophysiology of these disorders.
The advanced cognitive capacities of humans are linked to the evolution of a number of species-specific cortical features. In this Review, Pierre Vanderhaeghen and Franck Polleux discuss the genomic modifications and changes in neurodevelopmental mechanisms that underpin the human brain’s unique complexity and function.
Through their widespread connectivity, cholinergic projection neurons in the basal forebrain can modulate diverse cognitive functions. In this Review, Ananth and colleagues provide a comprehensive overview of the development, organization and function of different populations of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons.
Ion channels in primary sensory neurons are molecular targets for the treatment of chronic pain. In this Perspective, Ovsepian and Waxman assess prospective gene therapies directed towards such targets and discuss their translational potential to enable precision pain medicine.