Showing papers in "Trends in Neurosciences in 2009"

TL;DR: Developments in the signaling mechanisms that regulate specific aspects of reactive astrogliosis are reviewed and the potential to identify novel therapeutic molecular targets for diverse neurological disorders is highlighted.

TL;DR: There is an emerging view, which is reviewed herein, in which brain function actually arises from the coordinated activity of a network comprising both neurons and glia, rather than the classically accepted paradigm that brain function results exclusively from neuronal activity.

TL;DR: The evidence for early sensory selection by oscillatory phase-amplitude modulations, its mechanisms and its perceptual and behavioral consequences are reviewed.

TL;DR: Recent findings detailing the mechanisms through which air pollution reaches the brain and activates the resident innate immune response to become a chronic source of pro-inflammatory factors and ROS, culminating in CNS disease are summarized.

TL;DR: Recent data involving purinergic signalling in pathological conditions, including pain, trauma, ischaemia, epilepsy, migraine, psychiatric disorders and drug addiction are highlighted, which are expected to lead to the development of therapeutic strategies for these disorders with novel mechanisms of action.

TL;DR: This work proposes a model in which the processing of the interoceptive effects of drug use by the insula contributes to conscious drug urges and to decision-making processes that precipitate relapse.

TL;DR: The targets and mechanisms underlying improvements in neurological performance, learning/memory and other disease phenotypes, and the potential for some HDAC inhibitors to prove clinically effective in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders are discussed.

TL;DR: Optimal maintenance of brain health might depend on exercise and intake of natural products, and the potential synergy between diet and exercise could involve common cellular pathways important for neurogenesis, cell survival, synaptic plasticity and vascular function.

TL;DR: The adaptive function of memory reconsolidation is explored in more detail, with a strong emphasis on its role in updating memories to maintain their relevance.

TL;DR: The similarities between nigrostriatal and mesolimbic dopamine systems can be as important as their differences.

TL;DR: Astrocytes have a pivotal role in dynamic signaling within the neurovascular unit and important questions remain on how this signaling is integrated with other pathways in health and disease.

TL;DR: Evidence from patient material is emerging that miRNA dysregulation could, indeed, contribute to neurodegenerative disorders, and miRNAs are moving rapidly center stage as key regulators of neuronal development and function in addition to important contributors to neuro degenerative disorder.

TL;DR: A recently identified mechanism of neuronal plasticity in primary afferent nociceptive nerve fibers (nociceptors) by which an acute inflammatory insult or environmental stressor can trigger long-lasting hypersensitivity of nocICEptors to inflammatory cytokines is described.

TL;DR: In Parkinson's disease, spatial covariance analysis of resting-state metabolic images has identified specific regional patterns associated with motor and cognitive symptoms and these networks have been particularly helpful in uncovering compensatory mechanisms in genetically at-risk individuals.

TL;DR: The latest neurophysiological findings concerning microsaccades are reviewed and their relationships to perception and cognition are discussed and the most promising lines of enquiry are identified.

TL;DR: An update on the role of these emerging concepts in understanding the complex time course of SZ from early neurodevelopmental disturbances to later onset is provided and ways of testing these in the future are suggested.

TL;DR: These new findings highlight the potential of EE as a promising non-invasive strategy to ameliorate deficits in the maturation of the nervous system and to promote recovery of normal sensory functions in pathological conditions affecting the adult brain.

TL;DR: This hypothesis states that mossy fiber inputs to the granular layer are transformed into well-timed spike bursts by intrinsic granule cell processing, that feedforward Golgi cell inhibition sets a limit to the duration of such bursts and that these activities are spread over particular fields in thegranular layer so as to generate ongoing time-windows for proper control of interacting motor domains.

TL;DR: It is proposed that a non-apoptotic caspase-associated form of death is occurring in tauopathy, and emerging evidence of how changes in this protein might ultimately lead to neuronal death is discussed.

TL;DR: Olfactory system oscillations play out with beautiful temporal and behavioral regularity on the oscilloscope and seem to scream 'meaning', but much remains to be done for a full understanding of their functions.

TL;DR: These findings support a novel view of AsDs in which many independent, individually rare genetic variants, each associated with a very high relative risk, together explain a large proportion of ASDs.

TL;DR: The best studied pathways of tPA neurotoxicity are discussed along with future directions for a safer use of t PA as a thrombolytic agent in the setting of acute ischemic stroke.

TL;DR: The history and evidence behind the concept of early specification of neurons are examined, and the latest compendium of genes and signaling molecules involved in neuronal fate determination and specification is provided.

TL;DR: Evidence that learning depends, instead, on learning a temporal map is reviewed, which yields a quantitative account of the heretofore undefined, but theoretically crucial, concept of temporal pairing, an account in quantitative accord with surprising experimental findings.

TL;DR: Several neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies now lend growing support to a framework introduced in the late 1980s that mental images arise from neural activity in early sensory cortices both during perception and recall.

TL;DR: BAC transgenic mice are changing the way to conceive experiments and provide an opportunity to fill the gaps between molecular and systems neuroscience, demonstrating the striking segregation between neurons expressing dopamine D1 and D2 receptors and significantly extending the overall knowledge of striatal neurons.

TL;DR: Human functional brain mapping as the authors presently know it began when the experimental strategies of cognitive psychology were combined with modern brain-imaging techniques to examine how brain function supports mental activities.

TL;DR: Evidence that TRPV channels in the central nervous system might contribute to many basic neuronal functions including resting membrane potential, neurotransmitter release and synaptic plasticity is reviewed.

TL;DR: It is suggested that the dual roles had by mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum could compromise their function, leading to accelerated aging of SNc DA neurons, particularly in the face of genetic or environmental stress.

TL;DR: Plasticity arising from spared systems as a particularly important and often unrecognized mechanism that potentially contributes to functional recovery in studies of 'regeneration' after spinal cord injury is addressed.