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Inhibition of nucleus accumbens neurons is crucial for reward consumption. Vachez, Tooley et al. characterize arkypallidal neurons in the ventral pallidum that inhibit accumbal neurons to sustain reward consumption in a value-dependent manner.

The authors study mechanisms underlying neuromodulatory control of transitions between brain and behavioral states. They identify a mechanism whereby modulation of Gq activity in basolateral amygdala parvalbumin interneurons mediates the transition to a fear-associated network and behavioral state.

Deciphering a 'neural code' usually requires measurement of either the rate of spike (electrical impulses) production or the spike synchrony. However, these two measures are not independent, as higher rates are associated with higher synchrony. It is further shown that the connection between rate and synchrony enhances information coding.

Sleep spindles during non-rapid eye movement are important for memory consolidation and require specific neuronal firing conditions in non-human mammals. Here, the authors show these conditions are present in humans, potentially facilitating spike-timing-dependent plasticity.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

Native state proteomics of PV interneurons revealed unique molecular features of high translational and metabolic activity, and enrichment of Alzheimer’s risk genes. Early amyloid pathology exerted unique effects on mitochondria, mTOR signaling and neurotransmission in PV neurons.

Temporal interference stimulation is thought to act via low-frequency envelope demodulation. Here, the authors demonstrate that stimulation thresholds in TIS follow the same carrier frequency dependence as direct kHz stimulation, indicating a shared biophysical mechanism.

High-density multimodal soft bioelectronic fibres provide a platform for minimally invasive implantable electronics, where diverse sensing and stimulation functionalities can be effectively integrated.

After spinal cord injury (SCI), cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) levels drop in the central nervous system. Here, authors show that boosting cAMP and subsequently activating corticospinal neurons led to improved neuronal function and motor recovery in female rats after SCI, highlighting a brainstem rerouting pathway for restoring movement after injury.

This study maps the connections of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse cortex, revealing distinct local and intercortical wiring patterns, and provides an open framework for exploring the connectivity of cell types.

Here the authors find that increased place cell activity during exploratory head-scanning behaviors predicted the formation and potentiation of place fields on the next pass through that location, regardless of environmental familiarity and across multiple days. This place cell activity is a strong candidate mechanism to mediate the one-trial encoding of ongoing experiences necessary for memory.

In mice, prolonged consumption of a high-fat diet decreases interest in calorie-rich foods as a result of reduced neurotensin expression and signalling, which uncouples hedonic feeding behaviour linked to neurons projecting from lateral nucleus accumbens to ventral tegmental area.

Disrupted dopamine neuron firing is thought to contribute to cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that mice overexpressing D2R in the striatum, commonly seen in schizophrenia, are also impaired in recruitment of dopamine neurons during working memory performance.

How the cortex generates movement to achieve different tasks remains poorly understood. Here the authors show that the cortex serializes motor control by first performing task-specific computations in dorsal premotor cortex in order to then generate task-independent commands in primary motor cortex.

Motor cortex generates commands for voluntary movement, but its role in tasks driven by a spinal pattern generator remains unclear. Here, the authors identify a cortical signal for inertial load in locomoting mice that is decoupled from motor output.

Behaviorally relevant neural rhythms have been mainly studied at the neural population level. Here, the authors show that subthreshold membrane voltage delta-frequency oscillations in individual striatal cholinergic neurons modulate spike timing, striatal network beta rhythmicity, and track patterned stepping movement.

Noel et al. show aberrant updating of expectations in three distinct mouse models of autism spectrum disorder. Brain-wide neurophysiology data suggest this stems from excess units encoding deviations from prior mean and a lack of sensory prediction errors in frontal areas.

ChReef is an optogenetic actuator for sustained optogenetic control of excitable cells in a variety of preclinical applications.

Peripheral sensory organ damage leads to compensatory cortical plasticity. Here, the authors show that after noise trauma, auditory cortical neurons display cell-type-specific plasticity in their sound-evoked and intrinsic properties.

Angelman syndrome (AS) is characterized by developmental delay and intellectual disability, but the underlying pathophysiology is not well understood. Here the authors use induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons from AS patients and find impaired maturation of resting membrane potential and action potential firing, and defects in synaptic activity associated with the disease.

During decision-making, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex flip-flop between representing the value of alternative options, which influences ramping signals in the downstream anterior cingulate cortex that encode the choice response.

The noisy dynamics of biological neurons is vital for cognition, but artificial neurons failed to replicate it. Here, the authors show that neurons built with diffusive memristors can emulate the balance of stochastic and deterministic activity in biological neurons, while surpassing them in computational efficiency.

Muscle fibers have diverse properties—for example, slow and fast twitch. Groups of fibers are activated by motoneurons. Marshall et al. found that motoneurons are used flexibly, presumably allowing us to intelligently employ fibers suited to each task.

The visual signals transmitted by the retina to the brain are affected by random drift in eye position, but the impact of this on visual capabilities is not clear. Here, the authors show that the decoding of images from evoked spike trains recorded in the macaque retina improves with fixational eye movements, even when the eye position is unknown.

Sex differences in reward processing are at present poorly understood. Calipari and Juarezet al. report oestrous cycle-dependent fluctuations in firing of VTA dopamine neurons that drive alterations in DAT function expressed in terminals in the NAc. These differences underlie enhanced cocaine reward processing during oestrus.

DREDge is a software tool for motion correction of high-density electrophysiology recordings. It can handle action potential or local field potential data and is demonstrated on a variety of acute or chronic recordings from humans, nonhuman primates and mice.

LFADS, a deep learning method for analyzing neural population activity, can extract neural dynamics from single-trial recordings, stitch separate datasets into a single model, and infer perturbations, for example, from behavioral choices to these dynamics.

Garrett et al. show with intracranial electroencephalography that cortico-cortical co-ripples increase during reading and semantic decisions.

Osmoregulated vasopressin release is facilitated during the late sleep period to prevent dehydration. This study finds that suprachiasmatic clock neurons modulate osmosensory synapses onto vasopressin neurons to enable such facilitation.

The brain’s ability to route information selectively is vital for perception and behavior. Here, the authors demonstrate that routing causally depends on the precise synchronization of rhythmic neuronal activity between sending and receiving neurons.

The neurophysiological mechanisms of deep brain stimulation remain poorly understood. Through fluorescence voltage imaging of individual hippocampal neurons in awake mice, the authors show that deep brain stimulation causes membrane depolarization that impairs a neuron’s ability to respond to intrinsic network activity patterns and optogenetic somatic depolarization, thereby creating an informational lesion.

Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid, yet the distinct or shared neurobiological correlates of anxiety remain elusive. Here, Morel et al. define that the midbrain projection to the basolateral amygdala control anxiety but not depression.

Single-layer graphene increases neuron excitability and firing activity by influencing the distribution of potassium ions at the cellular interface.

Chronic social-defeat stress increases phasic firing of ventral tegmental area (VTA) neurons and increases the amount of BDNF in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). The authors show that increased activity of NAc-projecting VTA neurons is sufficient to increase the amount of BDNF in the NAc, an effect that depends on CRF signaling in the NAc.

Optogenetic induction of phasic, but not tonic, firing in VTA dopamine neurons induces susceptibility to stress in mice undergoing a subthreshold social-defeat paradigm and in previously resilient mice that have been subjected to repeated social-defeat stress, and this effect is projection-pathway specific.

Natural behaviors induce changes to hidden states of the world that may be vital to track. Here, in monkeys navigating virtually to hidden goals, the authors show that neural interactions in the posterior parietal cortex play a role in tracking displacement from an unobservable goal.

Every spring, Bogong moths use the starry night sky as a compass to navigate up to 1,000 km towards their alpine migratory goal.

Neuropixels 1.0 NHP is a 45-mm, high-density silicon probe capable of recording large numbers of neurons with single-neuron resolution from most areas in a macaque’s brain.

Ketamine is a short-acting analgesic that also has anti-depressant effects. Here the authors show in rat models of chronic pain that low-dose ketamine can induce an anti-aversive state that persists after the initial short term analgesia has ended.

The authors define two functionally distinct external globus pallidus basal ganglia pathways and their differential contributions to motor and cognitive Parkinsonian deficits in mice.

Primates use their arms in complex ways, frequently involving coordination between the two arms. Here, the authors show that task-specific information is shared across the hemispheres in a frequency-specific manner, perhaps in service of bimanual coordination.

Rhine et al. find that neuronal aging leads to widespread dysregulation of RNA biology, including mislocalization of splicing proteins like TDP-43, chronic cellular stress and reduced resiliency.

During non-REM sleep, the thalamus produces spindles and the cortex produces downstates, but the interaction between these two areas in these sleep phenomena is not understood. Here, authors describe the dynamic loop between the thalamus and cortex that organizes the production of spindles and downstates in the human brain.

This study describes a projection from the medial prefrontal cortex to the central amygdala that is involved in the regulation of defensive responses to threat.

This paper describes a neurotechnology that interacts with neural circuits in the spinal cord to restore arm and hand control after injury. With this implant, monkeys with paralysis recovered the ability to reach and grasp just a few days after injury.

This study describes the generation of knock-in mouse lines that express optogenetic activators or silencers in a CRE recombinase–dependent manner, and demonstrates the reliability and utility of these tools with in vivo and ex vivo light-induced activation and silencing of neuronal activity.