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The inability of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells to shift the circadian clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus during daytime is caused by light-dependent depolarization block of these cells.

Moscarello and Penzo propose that mutually inhibitory circuits within the central nucleus of the amygdala implement a ‘winner-takes-all’ mechanism that guides transitions across defensive modes defined by threat-imminence theory.

Inhibiting projections from the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus to a specific division of the amygdala prevents fear conditioning in mice, indicating an important role for the thalamus–amygdala circuit in establishing and maintaining fear responses.

How prefronto-thalamic circuits shape emotional and motivated behaviors are not fully understood. Here authors report a top-down modulation in mouse prefronto-thalamic projections. The prelimbic area influences avoidance via direct and indirect pathways, revealing distinctive intrathalamic dynamics essential for complex behavior integration.

Catecholaminergic neurons of the ventrolateral medulla are known to drive diverse glucose counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia. Here, the authors show that projections from these neurons onto nucleus accumbens-targeting neurons of the midline thalamus selectively mediate hypoglycemic feeding.

Beas et al. show that stress exposure drives disinhibition of PVT projection neurons. This process involves an LC-mediated rise in extracellular DA in the midline thalamus, requires D2 receptors on PVT neurons, and increases stress sensitivity.

Ma et al. show that the PVT biases the selection of passive and active defensive behaviors via mostly segregated projections to the CeA and the NAc. Their results update current views on the role of the midline thalamus in fear-related behaviors.

Gao et al. provide evidence that two major classes of neurons exist in the paraventricular thalamus. One of these, termed type II PVT neurons, belongs to a previously ignored cell population that relays arousal information to the infralimbic cortex.

The authors show that fear conditioning induces potentiation of excitatory synapses onto somatostatin-positive inhibitory neurons in the lateral division of the central amygdala. Preventing this synaptic potentiation impairs the formation of fear memories, and activation of these neurons is necessary and sufficient for expression of fear memories.

Studies in mice show that observational fear learning is encoded by neurons in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in a manner that is distinct from the encoding of fear learned by direct experience.

The caudal ventrolateral medulla was thought to be involved in pain control, but its pathway was unknown. Here, Gu et al. identify the molecular components of a caudal ventrolateral medulla–locus coeruleus–spinal cord pathway and show it has a role in counter-stimulus pain control.

Ablating retinal input at early postnatal stages—but not later time points—impaired entrainment to time-restricted feeding in adult mice, as did silencing intergeniculate-leaflet neurons that express neuropeptide Y and project to the central pacemaker

In mice, glutamatergic globus pallidus neurons projecting to the lateral habenula (GPh neurons) bi-directionally encode positive and negative prediction error signals that are critical for outcome evaluation and are driven by a subset of basal ganglia circuits.