Maybe maybe some day, maybe next week?

One of the things I'm looking forward to most about my imminent graduation is guilt-free reading time. For some reason I can convince myself that it's okay to relax by watching movies, playing video games, or even spending countless hours browsing the web... but as soon as I pick up one of those all-text paper things, or even looking at something serious online, I get all guilty about the time I could be spending working on homework or reading for class.

And although I have a lined-up reading list for once I'm done that tends to stray away from my areas of expertise (examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc...), another of the things I'm most looking forward to is actually being able to keep up on new publications in areas I'm interested in. The new Neuron headlines jsut went up, and I'm just paging through the abstracts and drooling:

Memory Reconsolidation: Sensitivity of Spatial Memory to Inhibition of Protein Synthesis in Dorsal Hippocampus during Encoding and Retrieval by RGM Morris et al, with commentary by Howard Eichenbaum

A Clock Shock: Mouse CLOCK Is Not Required for Circadian Oscillator Function by JP DeBruyne et al. This one is of particular interest to me because this article was just pointed out to me yesterday.

Pten Regulates Neuronal Arborization and Social Interaction in Mice by CH Kwon et al, with preview by JM Greer and A Wynshaw-Boris. Again, of note due to a role in addiction.

This one sounds fascinating enough to even include the abstract:
Reward-Motivated Learning: Mesolimbic Activation Precedes Memory Formation by RA Adcock et al

We examined anticipatory mechanisms of reward-motivated memory formation using event-related FMRI. In a monetary incentive encoding task, cues signaled high- or low-value reward for memorizing an upcoming scene. When tested 24 hr postscan, subjects were significantly more likely to remember scenes that followed cues for high-value rather than low-value reward. A monetary incentive delay task independently localized regions responsive to reward anticipation. In the encoding task, high-reward cues preceding remembered but not forgotten scenes activated the ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens, and hippocampus. Across subjects, greater activation in these regions predicted superior memory performance. Within subject, increased correlation between the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area was associated with enhanced long-term memory for the subsequent scene. These findings demonstrate that brain activation preceding stimulus encoding can predict declarative memory formation. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that reward motivation promotes memory formation via dopamine release in the hippocampus prior to learning.

A review on prions, New Insights into Prion Structure and Toxicity by DA Harris and HL True

And finally, I'm only interested in Dopaminergic Control of Corticostriatal Long-Term Synaptic Depression in Medium Spiny Neurons Is Mediated by Cholinergic Interneurons by Z Wang et al (preview by CJ Wilson) because I sort of secretly hope that it will turn out to apply to corticoaccumbal LTD, although that seems unlikely.