Celebrating 10 Years | 2018

The Society for Neuroscience launched its gold open-access journal in November 2014. As founding Editor-in-Chief Christophe Bernard said in his editorial, “eNeuro at Ten: Just Warming Up,” “eNeuro was designed to serve the community of neuroscientists.”

To celebrate 10 years of eNeuro, throughout the year the blog will highlight findings of some of the most-cited papers published in each year of the journal’s history.

2018

What, If Anything, Is Rodent Prefrontal Cortex?
Mark Laubach, Linda M. Amarante, Kyra Swanson, and Samantha R. White

In this paper, Laubach and colleagues increase awareness of the growing lack of consensus on how to describe the rodent prefrontal cortex and how it compares to other species. Aiming to improve the reproducibility and clarity of rodent prefrontal cortex research, they survey publications on prefrontal cortex across species, review rodent brain atlases, and quiz prefrontal cortex experts on anatomical terms. They also provide evidence in support of a new hypothesis: differences in corpus callosum curvature may relate to anatomical prefrontal cortex differences across species.

 

Microglia Enhance Synapse Activity to Promote Local Network Synchronization
Ryohei Akiyoshi, Hiroaki Wake, Daisuke Kato, Hiroshi Horiuchi, Riho Ono, Ako Ikegami, Koichiro Haruwaka, Toshiaki Omori, Yoshihisa Tachibana, Andrew J. Moorhouse, and Junichi Nabekura

Microglia are largely known for their important role in the immune response to brain infection and damage and for their strong associations with many neurological diseases. However, they also play essential roles in sculpting circuits during both neurodevelopment and adulthood. Akiyoshi et al. explored the functional importance of microglia contacts with neuronal synapses in this paper. They found that microglia activation enhances synaptic activity and promotes the synchronized firing of local populations of motor cortex neurons, which has important implications towards neural circuit plasticity and cognitive behaviors.