Amazing neuroscience 2011

What papers have been most interesting in neuroscience for the past year (2011)?

This obviously reflects a very biased opinion based upon my own limited reading, interests, etc. These also aren't necessarily the best articles, nor are they even scientifically correct, but they are certainly interesting.

• Cohen Kadosh, R., Levy, N., O'Shea, J., Shea, N. & Savulescu, J. The neuroethics of non-invasive brain stimulation. Curr Biol 22, R108–11 (2012).
• Loo, C. K. et al. Transcranial direct current stimulation for depression: 3-week, randomised, sham-controlled trial. The British Journal of Psychiatry 200, 52–59 (2012).

2012 seems to have been a turning point in the growth of non-invasive brain stimulation with the rise of TDCS and TACS for treating psychiatric and neurological disorders and their symptoms, as well as for cognitive enhancement. The first paper looks at the important ethical implications for these technologies and the second shows some promise for their use in treatment.

• Carhart-Harris, R. L. et al. Implications for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with psilocybin. The British Journal of Psychiatry 1–8 (2012).
• Carhart-Harris, R. L. et al. Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1–6 (2012).

This pair of papers are interesting and important for bringing some long-taboo topics back into the scientific discussion.

• Huth, A. G., Nishimoto, S., Vu, A. T. & Gallant, J. L. A Continuous Semantic Space Describes the Representation of Thousands of Object and Action Categories across the Human Brain. Neuron 76, 1210–1224 (2012).

The Gallant lab (with Alex Huth leading this research) does it again with a killer fMRI study that basically shames previous attempts and redefines our "Victorian" views of the brain as a modular/hierarchical system. Any future fMRI studies looking at "X vs Y" tasks that don't make use of these methods are falling short.

Also, the associated website should be how science is done:
Brain

• Landau, A. N. & Fries, P. Attention Samples Stimuli Rhythmically. Curr Biol 1–5 (2012).
• Chakravarthi, R. & Vanrullen, R. Conscious updating is a rhythmic process.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109, 10599–10604 (2012).

The blood is in the water and everyone "in the know" is circling around the fact that visual awareness and processing is dependent upon oscillatory brain state, and these two papers show it beautifully. Now if only someone could somehow makeuse of this information... (FORESHADOWING!)

• Koralek, A. C., Jin, X., Long, J. D., II, Costa, R. M. & Carmena, J. M. Corticostriatal plasticity is necessary for learning intentional neuroprosthetic skills. Nature 483, 331–335 (2012).
• Berenyi, A., Belluscio, M., Mao, D. & Buzsaki, G. Closed-Loop Control of Epilepsy by Transcranial Electrical Stimulation. Science 337, 735–737 (2012).

The underlying knowledge of how brain-computer interfaces work, from a physiological perspective, and how they can be used in the treatment of disease has really matured with these two papers. Reading these things still makes me feel like I'm living in the future.

• Halberda, J., Ly, R. & Wilmer, J. B. Number sense across the lifespan as revealed by a massive Internet-based sample. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, (2012).

Neuroscientists and psychologists are finally learning how to incorporate large datasets into their thinking, making use of the internet to learn more about cognition and aging. This is also very relevant to my interests.

• Parvizi, J., Jacques, C. & Foster, B. L. Electrical Stimulation of Human Fusiform Face-Selective Regions Distorts Face Perception. The Journal of Neuroscience(2012).

While this paper is by friends of mine out of Stanford, I have to say that I really dolike this research a lot. It has a cool combination of methods, in a fortuitously unfortunate situation to really clearly show a behavioral effect of interfering with a fundamental process in human perception. (I wrote more detail about this on on my blog: Face processing in the brain: "That was a trip")

• Voytek, J. B. & Voytek, B. Automated cognome construction and semi-automated hypothesis generation. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 208, 92–100 (2012).

Yeah, yeah, it's my own. But dammit I really do think it's very interesting. It's even got its own topic on Quora (brainSCANr)! And I have said repeatedly and publicly that it will end up being one of the more interesting research projects of my career. (e.g., Bradley Voytek " SciPle.org and Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek is Bringing the Silicon Valley Ethos into Academia - Forbes)

• Friston, K. Ten ironic rules for non-statistical reviewers. NeuroImage 1–30 (2012).

Just bitchy in a way that so many of us in the field wish we had the clout to say the way Friston does.