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Luppi et al. identify transcriptomic and connectomic controllers of information integration and its breakdown induced by anaesthesia in humans, macaques, marmosets and mice.

The brain’s role in supporting consciousness is unclear. Here, authors show that global markers of consciousness in macaque cortex are suppressed by many anaesthetics, and restored by local stimulation of a thalamic nucleus that also induces awakening.

Each individual is unique and so is their brain activity. Using brain fingerprinting from functional MRI during anaesthesia, Luppi et al. find that human brains become temporarily more difficult to identify and tell apart when unconscious.

Decomposing neural information into synergistic and redundant components, Luppi et al. show how core brain regions support higher cognition in virtue of their synergy, revealing that human brains leverage synergistic information more than macaques.

As scientists, we want solid answers, but we also want to answer questions that matter. Yet, the brain’s complexity forces trade-offs between these desiderata, bringing about two distinct research approaches in neuroscience that we describe as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’. Recognizing the validity of both approaches dispels misunderstandings and unnecessary tension and promotes constructive interactions.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

In people with severe brain injuries, stimulation restored consciousness by engaging a deep brain circuit for wakefulness—revealing a target that may also guide treatment in stroke and epilepsy.

The effects of different choices on preprocessing pipelines for functional connectomics remain unclear. Here, the authors systematically evaluate a multitude of pipelines on resting-state fMRI, revealing a number of optimal pipelines for functional brain network analysis.

Methodological shortcomings have constrained studies describing the complex dynamics of interpersonal coordination, which is essential to human sociality. In this Perspective, Chidichimo et al. advance the case for the formal introduction of information-theoretic quantities and methods to overcome existing limitations in studies of naturalistic human interactions.

How do diversity (entropy) and integration of activity across brain regions interact to support consciousness? Here the authors show that anaesthetised individuals and patients with disorders of consciousness exhibit overlapping reductions in both diversity and integration in the brain’s default mode network.

Hansen et al. used in vivo functional imaging of the human brainstem and cortex to demonstrate how the brainstem shapes cortical functional architecture, including oscillatory dynamics, cognitive specialization and hierarchical organization.

The existence and properties of tetraquark states with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks have been widely debated. Here, the authors use a unitarized model to study the properties of an exotic narrow state compatible with a doubly charmed tetraquark.

Exploring virtual pharmacological treatments using whole-brain models and deep learning reveals improvements in disorders of consciousness models when stimulating serotonergic and opioid receptors.

New developing area of NeuroAI at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence has many open challenges, one of which is training the new generation of experts. In this Comment, the authors provide resources and outline training needs and recommendations for junior researchers working across artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

The LHCb collaboration reports an improved measurement of the oscillation frequency of mesons consisting of a bottom quark and strange quark, which is then combined with previous results.

Photonic devices on silicon offer the benefit of combining advanced electronic functionality with the high bandwidth of silicon photonics. Now, efficient second-order nonlinear activity in silicon waveguides strained by a silicon nitride top layer considerably advances the potential of all-optical data management on a silicon platform.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty collaboration reports a test of lepton flavour universality in decays of bottom mesons into strange mesons and a charged lepton pair, finding evidence of a violation of this principle postulated in the standard model.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a sleep phase characterised by random eye movements for which the underlying motor commands are yet to be revealed. The authors describe that a cluster of medulla oblongata neurons in the Nucleus papiliocontributes to the control of eye movements during REM sleep.

CP violation has deep implications for particle physics and cosmology. Previously observed only in meson decays, signs of CP violation have now been spotted in baryon decays by analysing the proton–proton collision data from the LHCb detector.

The accurate determination of quark mixing parameters is essential for the understanding of the Standard Model. The LHCb collaboration now reports the coupling strength of the b quark to the u quark through the measurement of a baryonic decay mode.

Combined analysis of proton-proton collision data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN by the CMS and LHCb collaborations leads to the observation of the extremely rare decay of the strange B meson into muons; the result is compatible with the standard model of particle physics, and does not show any signs of new physics, such as supersymmetry.

The LHCb Collaboration reports the observation of an exotic, narrow, tetraquark state that contains two charm quarks, an up antiquark and a down antiquark.

Metastability is a concept from dynamical systems. In the brain, it is thought to reflect the balance between the cooperative and independent functioning of brain areas or neuronal populations. In this Review, Hancock, Rosas and colleagues provide an overview of metastability in neuroscience.

Dynamical analysis of resting-state fMRI networks reveals a consistent increase in structure-function correlation and entropy decrease upon both general anesthesia-induced and deep sleep-induced loss of consciousness in humans.

Hansen et al. compile and share an atlas of neurotransmitter receptor/transporter densities in the human cortex and show that receptor achitecture reflects brain structure, function, dynamics, cognitive specialization and disease vulnerability.

Perturbations in a large-scale whole-brain model suggest that anesthesia and injury may be imparting functionally similar effects in terms of brain dynamics.