11-06-2013 | Ekaterina S. Lobanova; Stella Finkelstein; Nikolai P. Skiba; Vadim Y. Arshavsky, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Inherited retinal degenerations, caused by mutations in over 100 individual genes, affect approximately 2 million people worldwide. Many of the underlying mutations cause protein misfolding or mistargeting in affected photoreceptors. This places an increased burden on the protein folding and ...

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11-06-2013 | Shasha Zhang; Yan Liu; Yi Rao, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

A role for serotonin in male sexual preference was recently uncovered by our finding that male mutant mice lacking serotonin have lost sexual preference. Here we show that female mouse mutants lacking either central serotonergic neurons or serotonin prefer female over male genital odors when ...

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11-06-2013 | Virginia E. Sturm; Jennifer S. Yokoyama; William W. Seeley; Joel H. Kramer; Bruce L. Miller; Katherine P. Rankin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Emotional changes are common in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Intrinsic connectivity imaging studies suggest that default mode network degradation in AD is accompanied by the release of an emotion-relevant salience network. We investigated whether emotional ...

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11-06-2013 | Janine El Helou; Erika Bélanger-Nelson; Marlène Freyburger; Stéphane Dorsaz; Thomas Curie; Francesco La Spada; Pierr ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Maintaining wakefulness is associated with a progressive increase in the need for sleep. This phenomenon has been linked to changes in synaptic function. The synaptic adhesion molecule Neuroligin-1 (NLG1) controls the activity and synaptic localization of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors, which ...

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11-06-2013 | Luigia Cristino; Giuseppe Busetto; Roberta Imperatore; Ida Ferrandino; Letizia Palomba; Cristoforo Silvestri; Stefan ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Acute or chronic alterations in energy status alter the balance between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission and associated synaptic plasticity to allow for the adaptation of energy metabolism to new homeostatic requirements. The impact of such changes on endocannabinoid and ...

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11-06-2013 | Marija Kundakovic; Kathryn Gudsnuk; Becca Franks; Jesus Madrid; Rachel L. Miller; Frederica P. Perera; Frances A. Ch ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an estrogenic endocrine disruptor widely used in the production of plastics. Increasing evidence indicates that in utero BPA exposure affects sexual differentiation and behavior; however, the mechanisms underlying these effects are unknown. We hypothesized that BPA may ...

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11-06-2013 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

NEUROSCIENCE Correction for “Left-right asymmetry of the hippocampal synapses with differential subunit allocation of glutamate receptors,” by Yoshiaki Shinohara, Hajime Hirase, Masahiko Watanabe, Makoto Itakura, Masami Takahashi, and Ryuichi Shigemoto, which appeared in issue 49, December 9, ...

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04-06-2013 | Rebecca C. Meyer; Michelle M. Giddens; Stacy A. Schaefer; Randy A. Hall, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

GPR37 (also known as Pael-R) and GPR37L1 are orphan G protein-coupled receptors that are almost exclusively expressed in the nervous system. We screened these receptors for potential activation by various orphan neuropeptides, and these screens yielded a single positive hit: prosaptide, which ...

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04-06-2013 | Douglas Zhou; Aaditya V. Rangan; David W. McLaughlin; David Cai, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

One of the fundamental questions in system neuroscience is how the brain encodes external stimuli in the early sensory cortex. It has been found in experiments that even some simple sensory stimuli can activate large populations of neurons. It is believed that information can be encoded in ...

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04-06-2013 | Dennis Mathew; Carlotta Martelli; Elizabeth Kelley-Swift; Christopher Brusalis; Marc Gershow; Aravinthan D. T. Samue ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

The ability of an animal to detect, discriminate, and respond to odors depends on the function of its olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs), which in turn depends ultimately on odorant receptors. To understand the diverse mechanisms used by an animal in olfactory coding and computation, it is ...

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