Just reading the abstract, is it me, or did the authors revel in spewing a ridiculous amount of jargon instead of using the opportunity to give a simple and clear statement of the fundamental finding of the work to a general scientific audience?
"The epigenome and three-dimensional (3D) genomic architecture are emerging as key factors in the dynamic regulation of different transcriptional programs required for neuronal functions. In this study, we used an activity-dependent tagging system in mice to determine the epigenetic state, 3D genome architecture and transcriptional landscape of engram cells over the lifespan of memory formation and recall. Our findings reveal that memory encoding leads to an epigenetic priming event, marked by increased accessibility of enhancers without the corresponding transcriptional changes. Memory consolidation subsequently results in spatial reorganization of large chromatin segments and promoter–enhancer interactions. Finally, with reactivation, engram neurons use a subset of de novo long-range interactions, where primed enhancers are brought in contact with their respective promoters to upregulate genes involved in local protein translation in synaptic compartments. Collectively, our work elucidates the comprehensive transcriptional and epigenomic landscape across the lifespan of memory formation and recall in the hippocampal engram ensemble."
I think back to a historical abstract:
"We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest."
This paper describes a process significantly more complex than the static molecular structure of DNA, and its abstract is written for the audience of researchers sharing the authors' own specialism. That's actually more useful than the converse, because it enables members of that audience quickly to evaluate the contents for relevance to their own work, in a way that would be much more difficult, perhaps impossible, were it written more concisely.
Seconding this. The abstract reads as incredibly well written and clear to me. The technical terms are relevant and appropriately used. I don't see anything I would describe as reveling in jargon, though I have definitely come across such papers before.
I really don't understand why a non-expert would expect experts who are writing for other experts to dumb things down for them. You might as well complain that a graduate level physics textbook isn't readily understandable to someone with no mathematical background!
Nature journals have strict structural requirements for submitted abstracts.
And unfortunately, because this was Nature Neuroscience, the intended audience is more specific, which is why you see more jargon there.
Here is an extracted example from the latest issue of Science, for which the intended audience is more general:
Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia impose enormous human, social, and economic burdens. The prognosis of psychotic disorders has not substantially improved over the past decades because our understanding of the underlying neurobiology has remained stagnant. Indeed, the subjective nature of hallucinations, a defining symptom of psychosis, presents an enduring challenge for their rigorous study in humans and translation to preclinical animal models. Here, we developed a cross-species computational psychiatry approach to directly relate human and rodent behavior and used this approach to study the neural basis of hallucination-like perception in mice.
It’s not a perfect comparison because Science abstracts are apparently much larger (this is just the Intro!) but it does convey my point about language.
