Volume 26 Issue 10, October 2025

As a group, our scientific community has a responsibility to unpack the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind our work for the public, not least because much of our research is publicly funded. Here, I argue that alongside this important service, there are less apparent and perhaps even more motivating reasons to engage in science communication. I also offer some tips on getting started.

The scientific enterprise depends on attracting and retaining the very best talent, yet barriers persist that perpetuate inequities in the scientific workforce. Here I discuss the efforts of the ALBA Network to help anyone to work effectively to maximize scientific progress by making their communities more equitable and inclusive.

Far from being a niche concern, women’s brain health is a global issue, affecting more than half of the world’s population. Despite this, the unique aspects of how the female brain adapts, reorganizes and ages, particularly those shaped by hormonal transitions across the lifespan, have not received proportionate attention in research agendas, funding priorities or clinical guidelines.

Brain cell atlases are revolutionizing neuroscience by using single-cell and spatial genomics to reveal the brain’s cellular diversity across development, function and disease. Fully realizing the potential of these atlases requires continued technology improvement, multimodal data integration and strategies to address ethical challenges, paving the way for transformative discoveries in neuroscience and clinical applications.

High-throughput volume electron microscopy and deep learning-driven automated segmentation have revolutionized the mapping of neural circuits at the level of individual neurons and synapses, revealing new cell types and unexpected network architectures in diverse species. Although prospects for continued progress in connectomics are excellent, substantial technical and conceptual hurdles remain.

Neuroscience has inspired artificial intelligence (AI) for decades but, in recent years, AI tools have begun to revolutionize neuroscience research. The emerging field of NeuroAI has the potential to transform large-scale neural modelling and data-driven neuroscience discovery. The field must balance exploiting AI’s power while maintaining interpretability and biological insight.

The goal of theoretical neuroscience is to uncover principles of neural computation through careful design and interpretation of mathematical models. Here, I examine the use of top-down conceptual and bottom-up mechanistic models in theoretical neuroscience, exploring how they connect with experimental practice and where there is room for future growth.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Mengting Han discusses the development of CRISPR-TO, a programmable method for perturbing endogenous RNA localization, and its use for functional screening of the spatial transcriptome in neurons.

In this Journal Club, Mariam Aly discusses a 2000 study that attempted to settle the debate about whether implicit memories are lost or retained in amnesia.

In this Journal Club, Benjamin Cowley discusses a 2009 tour-de-force that provided a recipe for constructing closed-loop algorithms by letting predictive models speak for themselves.

In this Journal Club, Nina Rzechorzek explores a 2003 article showing that, during hibernation, ground squirrels reversibly accumulate highly phosphorylated tau in the brain (a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease) without developing neurofibrillary tangle pathology.

Growing evidence suggests that reduced cerebral blood flow contributes to cognitive decline in ageing and dementia. Attwell and colleagues discuss the underlying mechanisms and functional consequences of vascular dysfunction in ageing, Alzheimer disease and vascular dementia, and consider the implications for therapeutic interventions.

The autonomic nervous system has long been viewed as a simple motor system in brain-to-body signalling. In this review, Wang and colleagues highlight diversity within autonomic neurons and their dynamic roles across physiological systems and disease contexts.

The use of transcriptomic technologies has led to advances in our understanding of thalamocortical targeting during development. In this Review, Guillamón-Vivancos et al. discuss these advances in the context of how transcriptomic changes and neuronal activity work in concert to drive sensory modality specificity during the development of thalamic sensory nuclei.

Adverse experiences in early life affect brain development across species. In this Review, Nelson, Sullivan and Valdes discuss neuroimaging evidence for how these adversity-induced changes to human brain architecture alter developmental trajectories that may underpin adult psychopathology.