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Featured Paper of the Month – August 2016
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Marchant, Nathan J; Campbell, Erin J; Whitaker, Leslie R; Harvey, Brandon K; Kaganovsky, Konstantin; Adhikary, Sweta; Hope, Bruce T; Heins, Robert C; Prisinzano, Thomas E; Vardy, Eyal; Bonci, Antonello; Bossert, Jennifer M; Shaham, Yavin

In many human alcoholics, abstinence is self-imposed because of the negative consequences of excessive alcohol use, and relapse is often triggered by exposure to environmental contexts associated with prior alcohol drinking…

Featured Paper of the Month – July 2016
Published in Natural Neuroscience by Zhang, Wen; Zhang, Lifeng; Liang, Bo; Schroeder, David; Zhang, Zhong-Wei; Cox, Gregory A; Li, Yun; Lin, Da-Ting

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are overlapping neurodegenerative disorders whose pathogenesis remains largely unknown. Using TDP-43(A315T) mice, an ALS and FTD model with marked cortical pathology, we found that hyperactive somatostatin interneurons disinhibited layer 5 pyramidal neurons (L5-PNs) and contributed to their excitotoxicity…

Featured Paper of the Month – June 2016
Published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Quiroz, Cesar; Orru, Marco; Rea, William; Ciudad-Roberts, Andres; Yepes, Gabriel; Britt, Jonathan P; Ferre, Sergi

It is generally assumed that infralimbic cortex (ILC) and prelimbic cortex, two adjacent areas of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in rodents, provide selective excitatory glutamatergic inputs to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell and core, respectively…

Featured Paper of the Month – May 2016
Published in Neuron by Takahashi, Yuji K; Chang, Chun Yun; Lucantonio, Federica; Haney, Richard Z; Berg, Benjamin A; Yau, Hau-Jie; Bonci, Antonello; Schoenbaum, Geoffrey

Imagination, defined as the ability to interpret reality in ways that diverge from past experience, is fundamental to adaptive behavior. This can be seen at a simple level in our capacity to predict novel outcomes in new situations. The ability to anticipate outcomes never before received can also influence learning if those imagined outcomes are not received…

Featured Paper of the Month – April 2016
Published in Biological Psychiatry by Justinova, Zuzana; Panlilio, Leigh V; Secci, Maria E; Redhi, Godfrey H; Schindler, Charles W; Cross, Alan J; Mrzljak, Ladislav; Medd, Amy; Shaham, Yavin; Goldberg, Steven R

Based on rodent studies, group II metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR2 and mGluR3) were suggested as targets for addiction treatment. However, LY379268 and other group II agonists do not discriminate between the mainly presynaptic inhibitory mGluR2 (the proposed treatment target) and mGluR3. These agonists also produce tolerance over repeated administration and are no longer considered for addiction treatment…