Jo et al., Experience-dependent modification of mechanisms of long-term depression

Averbeck et al., Activity in prefrontal cortex during dynamic selection of action sequences

Brankatschk & Dickson, Netrins guide Drosophila commissural axons at short range

Kraves & Weitz, A role for cardiotrophin-like cytokine in the circadian control of mammalian locomotor activity

Marmigère et al., The Runx1/AML1 transcription factor selectively regulates development and survival of TrkA nociceptive sensory neurons

Yasuda et al., Supersensitive Ras activation in dendrites and spines revealed by two-photon fluorescence lifetime imaging

Tronson et al., Bidirectional behavioral plasticity of memory reconsolidation depends on amygdalar protein kinase A

Day et al., Selective elimination of glutamatergic synapses on striatopallidal neurons in Parkinson disease models

He et al., Molecular disruption of hypothalamic nutrient sensing induces obesity

Knöll et al., Serum response factor controls neuronal circuit assembly in the hippocampus

Zachariou et al., An essential role for deltaFosB in the nucleus accumbens in morphine action

Zhao et al., Role of p21-activated kinase pathway defects in the cognitive deficits of Alzheimer disease

Ziv et al., Immune cells contribute to the maintenance of neurogenesis and spatial learning abilities in adulthood

For you fellow New Yorkers – this announcement of a neuro-theater festival just popped into my inbox. A month of plays and performances (plus seminars) focusing on neurological conditions and the brain. How cool is that?? I’m quite tempted by Tabula Rasa and Cincinnati…

I’m just back from our company’s annual briefing & pep rally, where our efforts at blogging, here and over at Free Association, were honorably mentioned. I had been entirely unaware, and was quite astonished to hear, that the top brass – NPG Managing Director Annette Thomas! – regularly read the blog including your comments via RSS feed. Jeez… my scare of the week!

Silliness aside, this is really a very very good thing. Our voices and yours are being heard. Your numerous comments on “DBPR” are making an impression. Who knows, there might be some movement on this issue. If there’s any other burning issue you think we should be discussing here, send us an email. The email address is above, slightly camouflaged to discourage the spammers.

In our current issue, we’ve dedicated the editorial to introducing the blog to our wider readership, in yet another effort to increase participation. Our colleagues at Nature Cell Biology also mull the pros and cons of blogging in their current editorial. They seem reluctant about taking the plunge at this time, because they see us and Free Association having a slow start. I think they are correct in attributing this to scientists’ general lack of time, information overload, and reluctance to get involved in public discussions. But of course any new publishing venture needs some initial investment followed by patient courting of the audience, and we remain optimistic that the neuroscience community will adopt Action Potential as a useful forum for feedback and discussion.

You may have noticed that we haven’t put any new papers online this week. Enjoy the little breather – there’ll be a lot of very fine papers coming over the next two Sundays.

Just one new paper to ring in the New Year – however it is a special one insofar as it claims to decide once and for all a longstanding question in gender-specific brain development. Enjoy.

Bakker et al., Alpha-fetoprotein protects the developing female mouse brain from masculinization and defeminization by estrogens

A very happy 2006 to you all!