Search

The neuron-specific RNA binding protein NOVA1 has a single amino acid substitution unique to modern humans. Here, the authors characterize the evolutional specificity and the function of the substitution. Studies using humanized NOVA1 mice reveal its specific effects on splicing and vocalization.

Pradhan et el report that neuromodulatory systems linked to stress and satiety are recruited to induce sickness behaviours during chronic infection of Caenorhabditis elegans with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Caveolae in arteriolar endothelial cells—but not those in neighbouring smooth muscle cells—have a key role in neurovascular coupling, an essential function for meeting acute brain energy demand.

Lieder et al show that individuals with dyslexia and individuals with ASD rely mostly on recent and earlier perceptual information, respectively, during perceptual tasks. This may explain the unique difficulties associated with the two conditions.

Zhang et al. show that the brain of newborn infants can rapidly tune to discriminate phonemes.

Recent work indicates that drug delivery to the brain can be improved through disruption of the blood brain barrier using low intensity pulsed ultrasound. Here, the authors report a phase I/II clinical trial investigating the combination of a nine-emitter implantable ultrasound device and carboplatin in patients with recurrent glioblastoma.

An automatic framework, SNOPS, is developed for configuring a spiking network model to reproduce neuronal recordings. It is used to discover previously unknown limitations of spiking network models, thereby guiding model development.

Understanding the molecular and pathological features of paediatric low-grade glioma (pLGG) is crucial to develop targeted therapies. Here, the authors perform a radiogenomic analysis of pLGGs combining treatment-naïve multiparametric MRI and RNA sequencing, enabling prognostication based on immune profiles as well as prediction of treatment response.

This study introduces two new measures of brain function at the gray–white matter boundary, revealing distinct patterns of signal transmission and metabolic activity that deepen our understanding of brain organization and development.

In a prospective study involving 92 physicians from multiple institutions, access to large language model assistance on top of conventional resources increased a score expressing the quality of their reasoning in addressing patient care while assessing five clinical vignettes.

How microglia contribute to brain injury or repair is unclear. Here combining microglia manipulations and calcium imaging, the authors show that selective elimination of microglia leads to disrupted neuronal calcium dynamics and markedly increased brain injury after cerebral ischemia.

A defining human characteristic is the ability to perform diverse cognitively challenging tasks. The authors show that this adaptability relates to a network sampling mechanism, where brain-wide network states transiently blend the unique combinations of neural resources required by different tasks.

The authors show that memory-selective neurons in the human medial temporal lobe signal memory retrieval confidence. Using a balance-of-evidence model, the authors demonstrate that the signals provided by these neurons are sufficient to determine the choice certainty of declarative memory-based decision in single trials.

The metabolic enzyme acetyl coenzyme A synthetase directly regulates gene expression during memory formation by binding to specific genes and providing acetyl coenzyme A for histone acetylation.

To understand speech, our brains have to learn the different types of sounds that constitute words, including syllables, stress patterns and smaller sound elements, such as phonetic categories. Here, the authors provide evidence that at 7 months, the infant brain learns reliably to detect invariant phonetic categories.

Behavioural studies and neural recordings in mice show that virgin mice can acquire maternal behaviour through an oxytocin-dependent mechanism.

The hemodynamic response function (HRF) describes how changes in brain activity manifest as a transient signal (BOLD) that is detected by fMRI imaging. Here, the authors show that the HRF in white matter shows reduced magnitudes, delayed onsets, and prolonged initial dips compared to the grey matter HRF.

Why joints are highly responsive to systemic inflammation is unknown. Hasegawa et al. sought to address this question, developing a whole-mount imaging system of the entire synovium to profile the vascular, neuronal and immune components.

The amygdala processes emotional facial expressions, but its exact contributions are unclear. Wang.et al. use behavioural analysis of amygdala lesion patients, fMRI, and single-neuron recordings to show that both emotional intensity and ambiguity signals are processed in the human amygdala.

Early life inflammation has been linked to neurodevelopmental outcomes. Here the authors show that in mice, neonatal immune challenge results in CD3 + T cell infiltration to brain parenchyma, and microglial activation, to a greater extent in males than females.

To investigate the effects of chronic hyperglycemia on hippocampal network activity Wirt et al induced sustained hyperglycemia in rats and tested them in a spatial delayed alternation task while recording from the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex. They demonstrated that hyperglycemia impaired task performance and altered theta rhythm as well as increasing tau phosphorylation, which suggest there is potentially a direct link between chronic hyperglycemia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Studies of brain network development typically focus on a single scale. Here, the authors derived personalized functional networks across scales, and find that network development systematically adheres to and strengthens hierarchical cortical organization.

Obesity and aging increase Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk. Here, using an AD mouse model and high-fat diet, we suggest that immune exhaustion links the two risk factors, and identify a metabolite that can hasten immune dysfunction and memory deficit.

Previous research shows how taste types are represented across regions of the brain in non-human animals. Here, the authors examine how four basic tastes are represented in the human brain, showing evidence of the human gustatory cortex in the insula.

Endurance exercise is associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation. Here, the authors show the adipokine TNFα is a crucial mediator of exercise-induced atrial fibrillation and irreversible atrial remodelling characterized by fibrosis and inflammation.

Kim and coworkers describe a technique, EPSILON, to map AMPA receptor exocytosis, a proxy for synaptic plasticity, in mice. The authors demonstrated a correlation between AMPA receptor exocytosis and cFos expression during a fear conditioning experiment.

Intuitive thermal perceptions during cold-object grasping with a prosthesis can be restored in a phantom hand through targeted nerve stimulation via a wearable thin-film thermoelectric device with high cooling power density and speed.

A study shows that loss of memory precision associated with systems consolidation can be explained by neurogenesis-dependent reorganization of engram circuitry within the hippocampus over time.

The detection of scintillation caused by inhomogeneous plasma near a fast radio burst indicates an emission process that occurs within or just beyond the magnetosphere of a compact object.

Using single-neuron recordings in the human brain during a working-memory task, the authors show both stimulus-specific and nonspecific types of persistent activity in neurons of the medial frontal and medial temporal lobes. Persistent activity in hippocampus and amygdala was predictive of memory content and displayed dynamic attractor patterns.

Training with a multitasking video game is shown to improve cognitive control abilities that decline with age, revealing the plasticity of the ageing brain; these behavioural improvements were accompanied by underlying neural changes that predicted the training-induced boost in sustained attention and enhanced multitasking performance 6 months later.

Minimally invasive procedures for tracking neural activity are important for understanding of neural networks. Here the authors describe microfabricated implants and windows that enable long-term recordings of motor circuit activity in Drosophila, allowing them to watch how neurons change their structure and activity over weeks.

The neural sampling theory suggests that neuronal variability encodes the uncertainty of probabilistic inferences. This paper shows that response variability in primary visual cortex reflects the statistical structure of visual inputs, as required for inferences correctly tuned to the statistics of the natural environment.

vTwINS enables high-speed volumetric calcium imaging via a V-shaped point spread function and a dedicated data-processing algorithm. Song et al. apply this strategy to image population activity in the mouse visual cortex and hippocampus.

The ventral palladium (VP) is involved in reward and contains mostly GABAergic neurons, but also glutamatergic neurons. Here, the authors characterize glutamatergic VP neurons and show that glutamatergic versus GABAergic projections play roles in avoidance and reinforcement, respectively.

Palmitoylation is a post translational modification that regulates GPCR activity. Here the authors show that palmitoylation of 5-HT1AR by the palmitoyltransferase enzyme ZDHHC21 contributes to depression-like behaviour in rodents and might be implicated in major depressive disorder.

Combining rabies-based connectomics with single-nucleus transcriptomics, the authors identify a neural circuit through which GLP-1 receptor agonists suppress appetite in mice.

Repeated head impact exposure can cause memory and behavioural impairments but the physiological changes in the brain are not well understood. Here, the authors reveal synaptic adaptations as a potential mechanism for early abnormal behavioural events observed after mild and high-frequency head impact.

In mouse models of stress-induced depression, molecular and chemogenetic stimulation of the entorhinal cortex induces the production of adult-born hippocampal neurons and generates antidepressive-like effects.

Odorous chemicals broadly activate subsets of olfactory receptors in the nose, but how individual receptors contribute to behavioral sensitivity is not clear. Here, the authors demonstrate that detection thresholds in mice are set solely by the highest affinity receptor for a given odorant.

Beliefs about gods are theorized to develop from bottom-up neurocognitive processes. Here, in the U.S. and Afghanistan, the authors show that superior implicit learning of patterns in visuo-spatial stimuli predicts stronger belief in intervening gods and greater increase in belief since childhood.

The authors found human neuroimaging evidence that entire valence spectrum is represented as a collective pattern in regional neural activity, with sensory-specific signals in the ventral temporal and anterior insular cortices and abstract codes in the orbitofrontal cortices. In this way, the subjective quality of affect can be objectively quantified across stimuli, modalities and people.