This week many interesting reviews from a special issue of Current Biology on evolution of nervous systems (the first 6 papers):

• Tuthill and Wilson (2016) - Mechanosensation and Adaptive Motor Control in Insects.
• Schafer (2016) - Nematode nervous systems.
• Samrandache (2016) - Arthropod neurons and nervous system.
• Hochner and Glansman (2016) - Evolution of highly diverse forms of behavior in molluscs.
• Kristan (2016) - Early evolution of neurons.
• Warrant-(2016) - Sensory matched filters.
• Rojas et al (2011) - Differential Effects of Axon Initial Segment and Somatodendritic GABAA Receptors on Excitability Measures in Rat Dentate Granule Neurons. Modulation of threshold by axonal synapses.
• Eloundou-Mbebi et al (2016) - A network property necessary for concentration robustness. Sounds relevant for neural network robustness too.
• Crotty et al (2006) - Metabolic Energy Cost of Action Potential Velocity. About minimal energy consumption of axon conduction.
• Stein (2006) - Cell volume homeostasis- Ionic and nonionic mechanisms- The sodium pump in the emergence of animal cells. Is the primary function of he sodium pump cell volume homeostasis?

• Erecinska and Silver (1994) - Ions and energy in mammalian brain. Some information about ionic concentrations and their regulation.
• Clarke et al (2013) - Quantitative calculation of the role of the Na+,K+-ATPase in thermogenesis. Thermodynamics of ion movements in cells.
• Bollen et al (2016) - An efficient system to fund science- from proposal review to peer-to-peer distributions. An interesting alternative to grant agencies: every scientist is given a fixed budget that she chooses to give to a scientist of her choice.
• Marder and Bucher (2007) - Understanding Circuit Dynamics Using the Stomatogastric Nervous System of Lobsters and Crabs. A review on a very interesting CPG circuit.
• Golowasch et al (1999) - Network Stability from Activity-Dependent Regulation of Neuronal Conductances. A self-tuned model of the pyloric circuit.

• Harris and Attwell (2012) - The Energetics of CNS White Matter. There is a good collection of numbers about white matter, mainly optic nerve. Note that the energy equation for the resting potential is quite wrong (same as in Attwell & Laughlin 2001).
• Dewey (1896) - The reflex arc concept in psychology. A criticism of the input-ouput view of perception, which is still the basis of most contemporary systems and computational neuroscience, ie the idea that the brain responds to stimuli, when brain and environment are connected by a closed loop, not a mapping.
• Poirot and Timsit (2016) - Neuron-Like Networks Between Ribosomal Proteins Within the Ribosome. Sounds cool!

• Mudrik and Maoz (2015) - “Me & My Brain” Exposing Neuroscience's Closet Dualism. I agree: many neuroscientists are dualist! (e.g. neurons “encode” stuff; who in the brain is decoding then?)
• Tsien and Noble (1969) - A transition state theory approach to the kinetics of conductance changes in excitable membranes. Understanding channel state transitions.
• Benna and Fusi (2016) - Computational principles of synaptic memory consolidation. How to not forget things.

• Howarth (1975) - Heat Production in Non-Myelinated Nerves. A short review with comments.
• Gallup and Eldakar (2013) - The thermoregulatory theory of yawning- what we know from over 5 years of research. We yawn to cool our brain!
• Cohen et al (1970) - Changes in axon birefringence during the action potential. Suggestive of structural changes in the axon during the spike.

• Koser et al (2016) - Mechanosensing is critical for axon growth in the developing brain. It's not all chemical gradients! See also this cool review by Tomba and Villard (2015).
• Ingber et al (2014) - Tensegrity, cellular biophysics, and the mechanics of living systems. Physics of cell shape and mechanics.
• Armstrong and Cota (1991) - Calcium ion as a cofactor in Na channel gating. The effect of extracellular Ca2+ on Nav channels.
• Hille (1977) - Ionic basis of resting and action potentials. A nice review on the ionic theory of APs.

• Albrecht et al (2016) - Nanoscopic compartmentalization of membrane protein motion at the axon initial segment. On the AIS diffusion barrier.
• Pollack (2001) - Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life. This is a fascinating book I'm reading. Certainly wrong on many aspects, but still inspiring. The author's thesis is that cell water is structured by the charges on proteins (because water molecules are dipoles), and that provides alternative explanations for a number of phenomena, for example ion partioning (exclusion of Na+ from the cell).
• Kolata (1976) - Water Structure and Ion Binding- A Role in Cell Physiology? I stumbled on this very readable piece while reading Pollack's book.

• Catterall (2010) - Signaling Complexes of Voltage-gated Sodium and Calcium Channels. Very useful information for anyone interested in plasticity of excitability.
• Leterrier et al (2016) - Ankyrin G membrane partners drive the establishment and maintenance of the axon initial segment. Did I read plasticity of AIS diameter?
• Kratochvil et al (2016) - Instantaneous ion configurations in the K+ ion channel selectivity filter revealed by 2D IR spectroscopy. Showing how the K+ channel works (evidence for the “knock-on” model).

Back from holiday! Here are a few papers I noticed:

• Sigworth (1980) - The variance of sodium current fluctuations at the node of Ranvier. Estimating number of channels from noise statistics.
• Hu et al (2016) - DVS Benchmark Datasets for Object Tracking, Action Recognition, and Object Recognition. Vision benchmarks for spike-based computation.
• Marin et al (2016) - Reassembly of Excitable Domains after CNS Axon Regeneration. Medically interesting but also addresses an interesting fundamental question: how a neuron builds a functional organization of the initial segment.
• Howarth et al (1968) - The origin of the initial heat associated with a single impulse in mammalian non-myelinated nerve fibres. What produces heat during spike generation?
• Saal et al (2016) - Importance of spike timing in touch- an analogy with hearing.
• Koyama et al (2016) - A circuit motif in the zebrafish hindbrain for a two alternative behavioral choice to turn left or right. Includes a model of the escape reflex in fish (Mauthner cells).

• Hodgkin and Huxley (1953) - Movement of radioactive potassium and membrane current in a giant axon. Direct test of the ionic hypothesis: voltage-clamp current times F equals K+ flux.
• Dener et al (2016) - Pea Plants Show Risk Sensitivity. Brains are overrated.
• Hoyt (1970) - Sodium Inactivation in Nerve Fibers. Different models of Na inactivation, with a second-order equation instead of two coupled equations.