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Glioblastoma—the deadliest form of brain cancer—alters the calvarial bone and its marrow components, pushing it toward producing more myeloid cells and contributing to an immunosuppressive environment.

Khawaja et al. show sex-specific differences in neuronal-activity regulation by chaperone-mediated autophagy and that loss of chaperone-mediated autophagy leads to defective neuronal physiology and increased seizure susceptibility, linking chaperone-mediated autophagy to neuronal excitability.

NIPBL perturbation activates long terminal repeat (LTR)-derived alternative promoters due to reorganization of chromatin’s hierarchical structure, leading to LTR co-option and oncogene activation in melanoma cell lines.

Haematopoietic stem cell numbers are restricted at both systemic and local levels.

Correlated neural variability is prominent in the visual cortex, yet its role in neural coding is debated. Here, the authors show that covariability is modulated by spatial context and that it encodes uncertainty in a probabilistic representation of natural scenes.

Liver-projecting vagal sensory neurons play a key role in regulating energy balance, hepatic steatosis, and anxiety-like behavior in mice under obesogenic conditions. Modulating the liver-brain axis via the vagus nerve may offer a promising therapeutic approach for improving lipid metabolism, glucose homeostasis, and affective disorders in obesity and diabetes.

Caregiving behavior is critical for infant survival. Here we show that projections from galanin neurons of medial preoptic area to perifornical area of hypothalamus are anatomically similar between males and females but have sex-specific functional roles in caregiving and stress responses.

How the dauer, an alternative developmental stage in nematodes, exhibits distinct behavioral traits remains unclear. Here, the authors reveal the neural circuitry underlying these distinctions by reconstructing the dauer connectome and comparing it with other stages.

Learning results in persistent double-stranded DNA breaks, nuclear rupture and release of DNA fragments and histones within hippocampal CA1 neurons that, following TLR9-mediated DNA damage repair, results in their recruitment to memory circuits.

Adult neurogenesis is a unique form of neuronal plasticity, involving the genesis and integration of newborn neurons into the mouse dentate gyrus. Here the authors demonstrate that adult neurogenesis improves representations of space in the dentate gyrus by increasing the place-specific responses of mature neurons.

A dimensionality reduction framework, delayed latents across groups (DLAG), is proposed for disentangling the concurrent flow of signals between populations of neurons. DLAG reveals bidirectional communication between visual cortical areas.

Heterozygous deletions in the ANKS1B gene cause ANKS1B neurodevelopmental syndrome. Here the authors show this syndrome is associated with impaired white matter integrity, and that Anks1b-deficient mouse models display deficits in oligodendrocyte maturation, myelination, and Rac1 function.

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.

Cannabis impacts our brain by engaging the CB₁ receptor. Here, the authors identify a protein called GAP43 that interacts with CB₁ and blocks its synaptic functions. This finding provides a conceptual view to understand how CB₁ acts in the brain.

Bonnen et al. find that representations of 3D motion in primate cortical neurons have an unexpected structure that is shaped by the projection of the world onto the retinae. They demonstrate a link between this structure and human perceptual errors.

Visual crowding can strongly limit perceptual discriminability, yet its neural basis remains unclear. Here, the authors show that perceptual crowding is similar in monkeys and humans, and that feature encoding in neuronal populations in primary visual cortex is limited for displays inducing crowding.

Monosynaptic cerebellar projections to the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) increase the activity of SNc neurons and striatal dopamine levels. These projections may convey information related to movement initiation, vigor and reward processing.

Under some in vitro conditions, neurons of the deep cerebellar nuclei show a phenomenon called rebound potentiation, where, following a strong hyperpolarization, their membrane potential briefly rebounds to a more depolarized level causing a transient increase in firing rate. The authors, however, found that under more physiological conditions in vitro or in vivo, deep cerebellar nuclei neurons rarely showed rebound potentiation. This finding necessitates a re-evaluation of some cerebellar models, where rebound potentiation was postulated to be involved in plasticity and/or information processing.

The variability in synaptic connectivity observed at the cerebellar granule cell - Purkinje cell connection in mice accounts for motor behavior traits at the individual level, suggesting that cerebellar networks encode internal models underlying individual-specific motor adaptation.

The authors use a mouse model of rapid-onset dystonia-Parkinsonism to show that an adverse interaction between the cerebellum and basal ganglia can account for the symptoms in this condition. Aberrant cerebellar activity alters basal ganglia function via a di-synaptic thalamic pathway, causing dystonia.

How cortical areas interact via feedforward and feedback signaling remains unclear. Here, the authors recorded from V1 and V2/V4 in macaque visual cortex and found that feedforward and feedback interactions vary with stimulus drive and involve different neuronal population activity patterns.

Owls accurately localize sound sources near the center of gaze, but systematically underestimate peripheral source directions. Here the authors demonstrate that this behavior is predicted by statistical inference and show that the owl's map of auditory space decoded by a population vector is consistent with the behavioral model.

Enduring changes in synaptic efficacy are highly sensitive to stress. Here, the authors show that astrocytic delivery of metabolites has an important role in the stress-mediated impairment of synaptic plasticity.

Understanding of the genetic factors and molecular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders remains incomplete. In this study, authors show that microdeletions in the gene ANKS1B lead to loss of the neuronal synapse-enriched protein AIDA-1 and to a novel neurodevelopmental syndrome

The authors report that the cation channel TRPV1 suppresses excitatory synaptic transmission in dentate gyrus via a Ca²⁺-calcineurin and clathrin-dependent internalization of AMPA receptors. Activation of TRPV-1 triggers a form of LTD that is mediated by anandamide, but is independent of type 1 endocannabinoid receptors.

Electrical synaptic transmission is known to be modulated by intracellular magnesium. Here, Palacios-Prado et al.show that electrical synapses formed by connexin36 in the thalamic reticular nucleus are bidirectionally modulated by changes in magnesium concentration via pore-lining sensitive domains.

Humans and rodents normally store more urine in the bladder when fast asleep than when awake. In this study, the production of the gap junction protein connexin43, a regulator of bladder capacity, is shown to oscillate in mouse urinary bladder muscle in synchrony with the circadian clock.

The design of chemical photoswitches could potentially lead to the development of novel therapeutics that regulates neurotransmission. In this study, a light-sensitive modified derivative of propofol is shown to activate GABA_A receptors in Xenopusoocytes, rat ganglion cells and mouse cerebellar slices.

The contribution of epigenetics to many aspects of neuronal development and function is becoming apparent. In this Review, Zukin and colleagues describe how the dysregulation of epigenetic mechanisms may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases.

The astrocytic vesicular protein, synaptobrevin2 (Sb2), is implicated in neurotransmitter release, but its vesicular arrangement is poorly understood. Here, Singh et al. use super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to show that the total number of endogenous Sb2 molecules per vesicle is ≤25.

Herpes simplex virus type I and pseudorabies virus assimilate kinesin from host epithelial cells and repurpose the motor to traffic to the nuclei of neurons in the peripheral nervous system.

In the worm C. elegans, a previously unidentified pair of bilateral neurons in the male (termed MCMs) are shown to arise from differentiated glial cells upon sexual maturation; these neurons are essential for a male-specific form of associative learning which balances chemotactic responses with reproductive priorities.

Akt signaling has been implicated in a number of diseases, but its role in brain disorders is less clear. Here, the authors report that CTMP, an endogenous inhibitor of Akt, is critical in the neurodegeneration that is associated with stroke. Blockade of CTMP in a stroke model rescues hippocampal neurons.

The embryonic emergence of interneuron subtypes in mice is revealed by integrated single-cell transcriptomic analysis along a developmental time course.

A single fear-inducing stimulus increased GluR2 abundance and promoted incorporation of GluR2-containing AMPA glutamate receptors in mouse cerebellar cells, making the receptors impermeable to calcium and altering the activity of this inhibitory neural network. This switch was mediated by noradrenaline and action potential prolongation.

Single-molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization and live-cell imaging are used to study the contribution of transcriptional noise to stem cell heterogeneity, revealing that stochastic transcription dynamics are conducive to concomitant stem-cell maintenance and tissue homeostasis.

Quantitative connectivity matrices (or connectomes) for both adult sexes of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans are presented that encompass all connections from sensory input to end-organ output across the entire animal.

In this paper, Hunt and colleagues provide the first demonstration of bidirectional plasticity of NMDA receptor–mediated synaptic transmission at the hippocampal mossy fiber to CA3 synapse in rats. They also show that this form of long-term plasticity can influence CA3 burst firing and spike temporal fidelity, and exert bidirectional metaplastic control over plasticity at associational-commissural synapses.

Of the three major types of ionotropic glutamate receptors, synaptic kainite receptors have slow channel kinetics. This study characterizes Neto1, a novel auxiliary subunit of kainite receptor that directly modulates ligand binding and slow kinetics of kainite receptors.

Human cerebral organoids undergo vascularization and maturation in the mouse brain.

Inhibition of Bcl-2 and Bcl-x_L by ABT-737 is known to enhance tumor cell death. Here the authors find that it is actually protective against neuronal death in an animal model of ischemia via blockade of Bcl-x_L–induced mitochondrial channel activity. These findings point to Bcl-x_L as a potential therapeutic target.

Expression of GluN2 subunit of NMDA receptor (NMDAR) in rodents is developmentally regulated such that GluN2B expression is high during early postnatal period but is replaced by GluN2A in adulthood, thus conferring different NMDAR channel properties and kinetics. This study identifies a molecular mechanism for GluN2A/B switch that is mediated by the transcriptional repressor REST. This process is also shown to be affected by postnatal stress induced by maternal deprivation, leading to long-lasting effects on NMDAR-subunit composition in the hippocampus.