Cover legend: Embryonic (day 17) retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) require contact-mediated signals from neighboring cell types to become synaptically receptive. Here embryonic neurons are plated on top of a confluent layer of mixed retinal cells, which are sufficient to induce synapse formation. Dendrites are stained with MAP2 (green), and synaptic puncta are shown as an overlap synaptotagmin (blue) and PSD-95 (red). For more information, see the article by Barker et al. in this issue (pages 8150–8160).