Sensory systems articles within Nature

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Artificial neural networks that model the visual system of a male fruit fly can accurately predict the insect’s behaviour in response to seeing a potential mate — paving the way for the building of more complex models of brain circuits.

    • Pavan Ramdya

  • Research Briefing |

    A type of light-sensitive cell in one of the visual systems of fruit flies transmits two chemical messengers, histamine and acetylcholine, in response to the same light signal. These two molecules act on distinct neurons that have different functions: one type creates an image and the other synchronizes biological rhythms with the day–night cycle.

  • News |

    Ultra-specialized proteins enable octopuses and squids to taste surfaces with their suckers — and these proteins are tailored to each animal’s way of life.

    • Sara Reardon

  • Research Briefing |

    The cerebral cortex is the outer folded layer of the brain. It contains a population of neuronal cells that is dedicated to the representation of temperature. The activity of neurons in this ‘thermal cortex’ is different for warming compared with cooling, and is required for the perception of temperature.

  • Research Briefing |

    Touch signals from the skin are carried to the brain by intermingled projections of two pathways in the spinal cord. These pathways convey distinct features of tactile stimuli, and converge differentially on brainstem neurons that direct different aspects of touch to various brain regions.

  • News & Views |

    A clever application of perception-altering technology, enabled by genetic manipulations, provides insight into how fruit flies follow tendrils of airborne odour plumes to localize the source of smells.

    • Floris van Breugel
    •  & Bingni W. Brunton

  • News & Views |

    A combination of functional imaging and gene-expression profiling in brain tissue has been used to unravel the properties of 35 subtypes of neuron in mice, revealing a gene-expression axis that governs each subtype’s activity.

    • Hongkui Zeng
    •  & Saskia E. J. de Vries

  • Outlook |

    With millions of people losing their ability to detect aromas as a result of COVID-19, our most underappreciated sense is drawing researchers’ attention.

    • Richard Hodson

  • Outlook |

    The hundreds of receptors that give us our sense of smell have been found to have important roles in other parts of the body, and the prospect of targeting them with drugs is growing.

    • Liam Drew

  • Outlook |

    Veterinarian Cynthia Otto explains how we might harness animals’ ability to smell human illnesses — including COVID-19.

    • Julianna Photopoulos

  • Outlook |

    The loss of the sense of smell has been a hallmark symptom of COVID-19. The mechanisms behind SARS-CoV-2’s ability to interfere with this sense — as well as why variants such as Omicron do so less frequently — are becoming clearer.

    • Elie Dolgin

  • Outlook |

    Treatments for olfactory loss are currently scarce, but with millions of people unable to smell as a result of COVID-19, researchers are pursuing the problem with renewed vigour.

    • Sarah DeWeerdt

  • Outline |

    Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in older adults, but techniques are being developed to offset the worst of the damage.

  • Outline |

    People who develop the dry form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) currently have no effective options for preserving their vision. But several promising therapeutic avenues are being explored that might just change that.

    • Michael Eisenstein

  • News & Views |

    In insects, odorant receptor proteins form membrane ion channels that open on binding to an odorant molecule. The structures of an inactive and an active channel lend insights into how insects detect and distinguish between odours.

    • Emily R. Liman

  • News & Views |

    Behavioural and genetic experiments have revealed that fruit flies prefer green light over other colours in the morning and evening, and always avoid blue. These colour preferences rely on different mechanisms.

    • Charlotte Helfrich-Förster

  • Outlook |

    People’s reliance on sight gives ophthalmology research a special importance to society.

    • Sujata Gupta

  • Outlook |

    The medical benefits of bringing artificial intelligence to eye care outweigh the risks, says Aaron Lee.

    • Aaron Lee

  • Outlook |

    Pregnancy can affect the eye, but the recommendation that short-sighted women have a caesarean section to protect their vision is outdated and unnecessary.

    • Julianna Photopoulos

  • Outlook |

    Smartphone apps and peripherals that simplify the diagnosis of sight problems could help doctors to reach billions of people in low-income countries.

    • Andrada Fiscutean

  • News Feature |

    After decades of assuming that pain processing is equivalent in all sexes, scientists are finding that different biological pathways can produce an ‘ouch!’.

    • Amber Dance

  • News & Views |

    What Nature was saying 50 and 100 years ago.

  • News & Views |

    Recordings of individual neurons in the mouse brain reveal a main mechanism for motion processing in the primary visual cortex. These findings are likely to have implications for other species.

    • Jose Manuel Alonso

  • News & Views |

    Of the various temperature-sensitive ion channels identified previously, three have now been found to act in concert to detect painful heat and initiate protective reflexes.

    • Rose Z. Hill
    •  & Diana M. Bautista

  • News & Views |

    Information about taste sensations, such as bitter or sweet, is relayed from the mouse tongue to the brain through taste-specific pathways. It emerges that semaphorin proteins guide the wiring of these pathways. See Letter p.330

    • Jiefu Li
    •  & Liqun Luo

  • News & Views |

    A sophisticated analysis in mice of how inputs to neurons from other neurons are distributed across individual cells of the brain's visual cortex provides information about how mammalian vision is processed. See Letter p.449

    • Tobias Rose
    •  & Mark Hübener

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