Mitotic motors coregulate microtubule patterns in axons and dendrites.

Microtubules are nearly uniformly oriented in the axons of vertebrate neurons but are non-uniformly oriented in their dendrites. Studies to date suggest a scenario for establishing these microtubule patterns whereby microtubules are transported into the axon and nascent dendrites with plus-ends-leading, and then additional microtubules of the opposite orientation are transported into the developing dendrites. Here, we used contemporary tools to confirm that depletion of kinesin-6 (also called CHO1/MKLP1 or kif23) from rat sympathetic neurons causes a reduction in the appearance of minus-end-distal microtubules in developing dendrites, which in turn causes them to assume an axon-like morphology.

A novel role for retrograde transport of microtubules in the axon.

Short microtubules move within the axon in both directions. In the past, it had been assumed that all of the short moving microtubules are oriented with their plus-ends distal to the cell body, regardless of their direction of movement. The anterogradely moving microtubules were posited to play critical roles in the establishment, expansion, and maintenance of the axonal microtubule array.

Early integration of form and motion in the neural response to biological motion.

Although configuration is important for the perception of biological motion, it is not known whether the processing of configuration occurs early or subsequent to local motion processing. Here we report significantly greater adaptation of the N1 event-related potential elicited by a point-light walker (PLW) following an intact PLW relative to a scrambled PLW, static intact PLW, or no adaptation. These results indicate that the N1 to biological motion reflects the activity of a neural population involved in the early integration of form and motion, suggesting that configuration is processed at the same time as, or prior to, local motion.