Journal covers

Cover Picture: Cross-sectional view (left) and 3D reconstruction (middle and right) of an axon from cortical layer 5 (magenta) and its connecting dendrite (yellow) in the stack volume taken with serial block face scanning electron microscopy of the mouse posterior thalamic nucleus in a wild-type (upper panel) and a Snap25 conditional knockout (lower) brains at P18. There are excrescences on the contact surface of the dendrite in the wild type brain (upper right), but not in the Snap25 cKO brain (lower right). See Hayashi et al. 2021. Maturation of complex synaptic connections of layer 5 cortical axons in the posterior thalamic nucleus requires SNAP25. Cereb Cortex 31(5): 2625-2638.

(https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/31/5/2625/6047731).  

Cover image by Ayman Alzu’bi: immunofluorescent double labelling for ROBO1 (red) and calretinin (green) in

human fetal telencephalon and diencephalon at 8 post-conceptional weeks (coronal section).

Special issue of J. Anatomy Volume 235, Issue 3 Pages 431–696, September 2019.  Co edited by Gavin Clowry and Zoltán Molnár.

Cell-Specific Loss of SNAP25 from Cortical Projection Neurons Allows Normal Development but Causes Subsequent Neurodegeneration.

Hoerder-Suabedissen A, Korrell KV, Hayashi S, Jeans A, Ramirez DMO, Grant E, Christian HC, Kavalali ET, Wilson MC, Molnár Z.

Cereb Cortex. 2018 May 30. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhy127. [Epub ahead of print]

Cover Picture: Overlay of three cortical Cre-expressing strains - the image was created by overlaying false colour images of Rbp4-Cre; Ai14 (blue; L5), Ntsr1-Cre; Ai24 (green; L6a) and Drd1a-Cre; Ai14 (red; L6b) sections taken from similar positions within the adult brain. See Hoerder-Suabedissen et al. 2019. Cell-specific loss of SNAP25 from cortical projection neurons allows normal development but causes subsequent neurodegeneration. Cereb Cortex 29(5): 2148–2159.

Cover: Brain-wide projectome of L6b neurons in different cortical domains. Axonal projection signal from visual (red), auditory (green), and somatosensory (magenta) cortex was analyzed in the whole mouse brain at cellular resolution and was registered to the Allen reference brain (gray background). See Hoerder-Suabedissen et al. 2018. Subset of cortical layer 6b neurons selectively innervates higher order thalamic nuclei in mice. Cereb Cortex 28(5): 1882-1897.

Hoerder-Suabedissen A, Hayashi S, Upton L, Nolan Z, Casas-Torremocha D, Grant E, Viswanathan S, Kanold PO, Clasca F, Kim Y, Molnár Z.

Cereb Cortex. 2018 May 1; 28(5):1882-1897.

Cover Picture: Excitatory neurons in the mammalian neocortex originate from progenitors present in the embryonic dorsal ventricular and subventricular zones. Using the Tbr2^Cre transgenic mouse line and a cocktail of conditionally expressing fluoroprotein constructs, neuronal progenies of Tbr2 expressing intermediate progenitors were labeled. These multiple fluoroproteins, differentially tagged to nuclear, cytoplasmic and membrane sites allowed identification of clonal populations of neurons that were studied to understand laminar contribution and extent of lateral dispersion. See Vasistha et al. 2015. Cortical and clonal contribution of Tbr2 expressing progenitors in the developing mouse brain. Cereb Cortex 25(10): 3290–3302. October 2015.

J. Neuroscience: Cover legend: This illustration shows one hemisphere of a Cxcr4-GFP;CXCL12-RFP double-transgenic, embryonic mouse brain. The Cxcr4-GFP reporter (green) strongly labels thalamocortical axons, which enter the cerebral cortex rich in CXCL12-RFP fusion protein (red). The chemokine CXCL12 ensures efficient intracortical progression of thalamocortical axons by interacting with its cognate receptor CXCR4. For more information, see the article by Abe et al. (pages 13053–13063). September 2015.

Cover: Clonal labelling in the hyperpallium of a E11 chick embryo electroporated at E5 using CLoNe vectors. The CLoNe method enables the investigation of several clonally related cells within the same volume of brain, muscle and other tissues in mammals and sauropsids. See Research article by García-Moreno et al. on p. 1589. April 2014.

A mosaic of false colour laser scanning confocal microscope images of P8 Lpar1-GFP mouse brains stained for NeuN and CTGF.

See Hoerder-Suabedissen and Molnar 2013. Molecular diversity of early-born subplate neurons.

Cereb Cortex 23(6): 1473–1483. June 2013.

Tom Lickiss, Amanda F. P. Cheung, Charlotte E. Hutchinson, Jeremy S. H. Taylor, Zoltán Molnár (2012) 

Examining the relationship between early axon growth and transcription factor expression in the developing cerebral cortex. 

Journal of Anatomy, Volume 220, Issue 3, pages 201–211, March 2012

Coronal section through the dorsal cortex of a turtle embryo (Stage 25) and a coronal section through the dorsal cortex of a postnatal two days old mouse, both showing immunoreactivity for Nurr1 (appear red), conterstained with DAPI (appears blue). The Nurr 1 immunoreactivity is the strongest in the single cortical cell dense layer in the turtle. In the mouse the strongest immunoreactivity is in som, but not all of the subplate cells dorsal cortex.

Wang et al. 2011 paper in this issue provides analysis of the comparative gene expression patterns in sauropsids and mammals and examins the possibilities for ancestral and derived subplate populations in mammals. See Wang et al. 2011. Comparative aspects of subplate zone studied with gene expression in sauropsids and mammals.

Cereb Cortex 21(10): 2187–2203. October 2011.

In the news: Medscape, BBC Radio 4 - Today (audio), Daily Mail, Yahoo News UK, SFARI, ScienceDaily, GenomeWeb, UK Press Association, NIH, University of Oxford, Wellcome Trust, e! Science News, PHG Foundation, News Medical, Medical Xpress, India Current Affairs, MSN (Portuguese), terra (Portuguese), El Tiempo (Spanish), EFE (Spanish), abc (Spanish). August 2011

Kim Y, Wang WZ, Comte I, Pastrana E, Tran PB, Brown J, Miller RJ, Doetsch F, Molnár Z, Szele FG.

Dopamine stimulation of postnatal murine subventricular zone neurogenesis via the D3 receptor.

J Neurochem. 2010 Aug; 114(3):750-60. Epub 2010 May 6.

Cover legend: Selective inactivation of transcription factor Pax6 in the cortex at the onset of neurogenesis causes a region-specific increase and ectopic localization of layer 5 (labeled with Ctip2; red) and layer 6 (labeled with Tbr1; green) neurons and an almost complete absence of upper cortical layers. Massive progenitor accumulation at the corticostriatal border also occurs in the mutant brain.

For more information, see the article by Tuoc et al. in this issue (pages 8335–8349). Vol. 29, Issue 26, July 2009.

J. Physiol. May 2009; 587 (9).

Bottom left, periphery related thalamic axon segregation pattern in relation to the GFP-labelled subplate neurites in the Golli--eGFP (GTE) mouse at P10, and bottom middle, fluorescence photomicrograph of a coronal section through the developing barrel cortex of the GTE mouse at P10; see Piñon et al., pp. 1903–1915.

Altered Molecular Regionalization and Normal Thalamocortical Connections in Cortex-Specific Pax6 Knock-Out Mice

Maria Carmen Piñon, Tran Cong Tuoc, Ruth Ashery-Padan, Zoltán Molnár and Anastassia Stoykova

Journal of Neuroscience 27 August 2008,  28 (35) 8724-8734; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2565-08.2008

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/28/35/8724?iss=35

Topographic organization of thalamocortical connectivity in mice. Back-labeled cells in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (red) and in the ventrobasal nucleus (green) of the thalamus were observed after a single DiI crystal was placed into the primary visual cortex and DiA into the primary somatosensory cortex of a postnatal day 10 mouse. This pattern persists in mice in which Pax6 has been knocked out. For more information, see the article by Piñon et al. in this issue (pages 8724–8734).

The first neurons of the human cerebral cortex on the cover of Nat. Neurosci Vol 9 (7) in July 2006. Bystron I, Rakic P, Molnár Z, Blakemore C (2006) The first neurons of the human cerebral cortex. Nature Neuroscience 9(7):880-6.

Special Reviews (8) for Volume 23. Eur. J. Neurosci. on Molecular and Cellular basis of Cortical Development”(CONCORDE). March 2006. Issue edited by Z. Molnar and A. Goffinet.

Special Issue of Brain Research Bulletin (2005) (Edited by Z. Molnár, A. Butler, H. ten Donkelaar, L. Medina and L. Puelles). Contains over 35 papers which were presented on the 4th European Conference on Comparative Neurobiology, Oxford, 2005. (Volume 66 Number 4-6 September 15, 2005).

Backlabelled layer 5 pyramidal neurons on the cover of Cerebral Cortex Vol 14 (11) in 2004. Voelker CCJ, Garin N, Taylor JSH., Gahwiler BH, Hornung J-P, Molnár Z (2004) Selective Neurofilament (SMI-32, FNP-7 and N200) Expression in subpopulations of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in vivo and in vitro. Cerebral Cortex 14(11):1276-86.

Embryonic corticofugal projections on the cover of Development Vol 129 in 2002.  Jones L, López-Bendito G, Gruss P, Stoykova A, Molnár Z (2002) Pax6 is required for the normal development of the forebrain axonal connections. Development 129:5041-52.

Thalamocortical projections in the Snap25 KO mouse on the cover of J Neurosci in 2002.  Molnár Z, López-Bendito G, Small J, Partridge LD, Blakemore C, Wilson MC, (2002) Normal development of embryonic thalamocortical connectivity in the absence of evoked synaptic activity. J. Neurosci 22:10313-23.

Neurons with thalamic projections in the internal capsule on the cover of J comp Neurol Vol. 413 in 1999. Molnár Z and Cordery P (1999) Connections between cells of the internal capsule, thalamus and cerebral cortex in the embryonic pallium. J Comp Neurol. 413:1-25

Nodular heterotopia on the cover of Brain Vol 122 in 1999.

Hannan A, Servotte S, Katsnelson A, Sisodiya S, Blakemore C, Squier M and Molnár Z

(1999) Characterisation of neuronal heterotopia in children. Brain 122: 219-238.

Thalamocortical projections in the reeler mouse on the cover of J Neurosci Vol 18 in 1998.  Molnár Z, Adams R, Goffinet AM, and Blakemore C (1998) The role of the first postmitotic cells in the development of thalamocortical fibre ordering in the reeler mouse. J. Neurosci 18: 5746-5765.