Monthly Archives: May 2012

Positive feedback drives network (and manuscript) maturation.

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Whole-brain anatomical mapping of D1-Cre expression in inhibitory neurons (from Supp Fig.2)

It really is an embarrassment of riches here at Nature these days, what with so many excellent neuroscience-related studies emerging. Just in the last couple of weeks, we’ve had the following studies:

So really, a lot to write about from a science perspective. However, this blog is dedicated to bringing you the editorial back-story, so I wanted to touch on yet another interesting study, published in print today. This new paper offers an opportunity to discuss an important editorial issue: the manuscript appeal process. For more details, you can always read the appropriate section in our guide to authors. But it’s often helpful to follow a particular [successful] example in order to illustrate the process. Continue reading →

Call and response

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From Ramsden et al. addendum

The (highly abbreviated) life story of a paper appearing in Nature often goes something like this: ideas are birthed and experiments envisioned. Pilot experiments are run, yielding beautiful preliminary data. Replication and controls are then gathered over the course of months, if not years of hard labor. The paper is written, submitted, and reviewed. A few (two is typical) rounds of review and revision later, it is published (with highly variable degrees of reviewer and editorial unanimity). But this is by no means the end, rather, just a milestone in the evaluation process by the community.  In journals, post-publication evaluation has traditionally occurred in the form of peer-reviewed follow-up papers or formal commentary. This may change someday as alternative forms of scientific publishing are explored, but for today we’ll talk about a formal addendum we’re publishing on a 2011 paper by Cathy Price and colleagues and invite you to add to the discussion.

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“There is no spoon…”: Paralyzed fish navigates virtual environment while we watch its brain

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Overlaid on the micrograph of the fish is a slice of its brain measured with a laser scanning microscope, in which single neurons are visible.{credit}(courtesy of Ahrens et al.){/credit}

Sometimes an experiment will just reach off the page and slap you in the face, demanding attention. This happens to me every so often and I must admit, our latest paper from the lab of Florien Engert induced such an experience. There have been several cool, technical tours-de-force (is that proper grammar??) over the last few years involving different creatures navigating in a virtual environment while neuronal activity was monitored. These include a mouse running on a spherical treadmill, as well as a fly marching along a similar treadmill-style ball. But in these examples, having the subject head-fixed (for the stability of recordings in the brain, either with electrodes or through imaging) was moderately non-intrusive since walking motions were independent of the head. The same can’t be said for the subject in this latest example of a virtual reality navigator: a wriggling, swimming fish. Therefore, a more creative solution had to be sought and in a paper published online yesterday, Ahrens, Engert and colleagues decided that paralysis was the way to go in order to follow the neural activity of this navigating fish. Continue reading →