Otten et al., Brain activity before an event predicts later recollection
Tsankova et al., Sustained hippocampal chromatin regulation in a mouse model of depression and antidepressant action
Williams & Eskandar, Selective enhancement of associative learning by microstimulation of the anterior caudate
Hope you like ’em.
We’ve been looking for a while for a new colleague to work with us putting out your favorite neuroscience journal. Maybe you’d be interested? Or know someone who might be?? Let us know! Feel free to ask questions, too, if you’re interested but not quite sure what the job entails. Here is our job ad (it closes this coming Sunday officially, but I’m sure we’ll look at applications that come in a bit late…) :
Assistant Editor – Nature Neuroscience
Nature Neuroscience has a position available for an Assistant Editor. The journal publishes high-quality papers in all areas of neuroscience, including molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive and computational studies, and provides a highly visible forum for communicating important advances to a broad readership. For more information about the journal, see our website.
Applicants should have a PhD, a strong research background (preferably in cellular or systems neuroscience), broad interest in neuroscience, excellent literary skills, commitment to the communication of scientific ideas, and willingness and ability to learn new fields. Familiarity with online publishing would be an advantage. The successful candidate will participate in all aspects of the editorial process, including manuscript selection, commissioning and editing News and Views and Reviews, and writing for the journal. The job also involves attending meetings in the US and abroad to maintain contact with the international scientific community. The new editor will join our team in the Manhattan office of the larger publishing group that also produces Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Nature Methods and Nature Immunology.
To apply, please submit a curriculum vitae, a short (500-1000 words) News and Views-style article on an exciting and newsworthy recent development in any area of neuroscience, and a cover letter explaining your interest in the position to Human Resources Department, Nature Publishing Group, email: admin@natureny.com.
Applications should arrive as soon as possible, and no later than February 26, 2006.
Carvalho et al., Silencing of EphA3 through a cis interaction with ephrinA5
Diano et al., Ghrelin controls hippocampal spine synapse density and memory performance
Gooley et al., The dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus is critical for the expression of food-entrainable circadian rhythms
Ramírez-Castillejo et al., Pigment epithelium–derived factor is a niche signal for neural stem cell renewal
Lobo et al., FACS-array profiling of striatal projection neuron subtypes in juvenile and adult mouse brains
This witty riff (for German speakers only, I’m sorry!) on a News and Views we published in January left me chuckling for days. Oh lovely voles… sweet dopamine… No, I’m not going to attempt a translation. English speakers might instead enjoy some geeky-silly ’valine’tines with a biochemistry bent.
On 22 January, we published online the paper by Marmigère et al. about the transcription factor Runx1’s role in specifying TrkA-positive nociceptive sensory neurons. Then the Feb. 2 issue of Neuron came out with two papers also describing the function of Runx1 in nociceptor development (Chen et al. and Kramer et al.). Neuron also ran a third paper, on Runx3, and interestingly, although the three Neuron papers come from three different groups at Harvard, Basel and Columbia, they all share two co-authors.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at the sudden avalanche of Runx1 papers. We’ve known for a while that the related Runx3 is crucial to the development of TrkC-positive proprioceptive sensory neurons (Levanon et al., Inoue et al., both published in 2002), so together with the known expression patterns of the Runx’s, the idea that Runx1 would be ‘responsible’ for the nociceptive subpopulation wasn’t very far-fetched; of course several groups would be looking into this. Nevertheless I’m amazed that the three groups managed to published their Runx1 work in top-level journals near-simultaneously.
There are some very interesting differences among the Runx1 papers’ conclusions. Marmigère et al., using electroporation of wildtype and inhibitory Runx1 constructs, or siRNA, into developing chick embryos, found that Runx is necessary and sufficient for TrkA expression, and thus survival, of young nociceptors. Chen et al. made a conditional knockout of Runx1 and conclude that it is not required for TrkA expression or survival, but instead for the postnatal switch of many nociceptive neurons from TrkA to Ret expression (as well as other mature characteristics of these neurons).
Maybe these contradictory results can be explained by differences in timing of the experiments? Marmigère et al. electroporated at stage HH13, about 2.5 days old embryos, which is long before Runx expression sets in, while Chen et al. show loss of Runx1 at embryonic day 13.5, which is a bit later than its expression begins in mouse DRG. Or maybe one method is superior to the other, or maybe we’re wrestling with species differences?
Zhu et al., Dendritic patterning by Dscam and synaptic partner matching in the Drosophila antennal lobe
Walter et al., Decreases in the precision of Purkinje cell pacemaking cause cerebellar dysfunction and ataxia
Pun et al., Selective vulnerability and pruning of phasic motoneuron axons in motoneuron disease alleviated by CNTF
Lien et al., Visual stimuli–induced LTD of GABAergic synapses mediated by presynaptic NMDA receptors
Gütig & Sompolinsky, The tempotron: a neuron that learns spike timing–based decisions
Paton et al., Respiratory rhythm generation during gasping depends on persistent sodium current
Enjoy.
Alright, I admit these are a week old. Apologies…
Zheng et al., A transient network of intrinsically bursting starburst cells underlies the generation of retinal waves
Nitschke et al., Altering expectancy dampens neural response to aversive taste in primary taste cortex
Murray et al., The representation of perceived angular size in human primary visual cortex
Le Bras et al., VEGF-C is a trophic factor for neural progenitors in the vertebrate embryonic brain
Darcy et al., Constitutive sharing of recycling synaptic vesicles between presynaptic boutons
Comments welcome, as always.