Featured
-
-
Article
| Open AccessConverting an allocentric goal into an egocentric steering signal
In Drosophila, FC2 neurons signal a navigational goal, which is compared with the fly’s heading by PFL3 neurons to guide moment-to-moment steering.
- Peter Mussells Pires
- , Lingwei Zhang
- & Gaby Maimon
-
News & Views |
A neural circuit for navigation keeps flies on target
Studies reveal how neuronal populations in the fruit fly brain work together to compare the direction of a goal with the direction that the fly is facing, and convert this into a signal that steers the fly towards its target.
- Katherine Nagel
-
Article
| Open AccessSpatial transcriptomics reveal neuron–astrocyte synergy in long-term memory
Spatial and single-cell transcriptomic analyses of the mouse basolateral amygdala reveal transcriptomic signatures, spatial resolution and interactions of cells that constitute the memory engram, including crucial neuron–astrocyte interactions.
- Wenfei Sun
- , Zhihui Liu
- & Stephen R. Quake
-
Article
| Open AccessTransforming a head direction signal into a goal-oriented steering command
Here we show how PFL2 and PFL3 neurons in the Drosophila brain compare a representation of direction with internal spatial goals, both anchored in world-centric coordinates, and produce body-centric steering commands that act to correct deviations from the goal direction.
- Elena A. Westeinde
- , Emily Kellogg
- & Rachel I. Wilson
-
Article
| Open AccessCirculating myeloid-derived MMP8 in stress susceptibility and depression
Serum MMP8 is increased in stress-susceptible mice following chronic stress and leads to brain structure and behavioural changes in mice.
- Flurin Cathomas
- , Hsiao-Yun Lin
- & Scott J. Russo
-
Article |
Identification of direct connections between the dura and the brain
Arachnoid cuff exit points create openings in the arachnoid barrier enabling the drainage of cerebrospinal fluid and exchange of molecules and cells between the dura and the subarachnoid space, therefore physically connecting the brain and the dura.
- Leon C. D. Smyth
- , Di Xu
- & Jonathan Kipnis
-
Research Highlight |
The brain area that lights up in prickly people
Those who are quick to take offence show similar levels of activity in a region of the brain that’s crucial for decision-making.
-
News Explainer |
Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip: what scientists think of first human trial
Some researchers are concerned about a lack of transparency surrounding the implant, which aims to allow people to control devices through thought alone.
- Liam Drew
-
News |
This AI learnt language by seeing the world through a baby’s eyes
A neural network that taught itself to recognize objects using the filmed experiences of a single infant could offer new insights into how humans learn.
- Elizabeth Gibney
-
Nature Video |
Why human brain cells grow so slowly
Some human neurons take years to reach maturity; an epigenetic ‘brake’ could be responsible.
- Shamini Bundell
-
News & Views |
How speech is produced and perceived in the human cortex
A neural probe has been used to capture the activity of large populations of single neurons as people are speaking or listening, providing detailed insights into how the brain encodes specific features of speech.
- Yves Boubenec
-
News Feature |
How cancer hijacks the nervous system to grow and spread
A new wave of research is unpicking the relationship between cancer and neurons — and looking for ways to stop the crosstalk.
- McKenzie Prillaman
-
Article
| Open AccessAn epigenetic barrier sets the timing of human neuronal maturation
The slow maturation of human neurons is regulated by epigenetic modification in nascent neurons, mediated by EZH2, EHMT1, EHMT2 and DOT1L.
- Gabriele Ciceri
- , Arianna Baggiolini
- & Lorenz Studer
-
Article
| Open AccessSingle-neuronal elements of speech production in humans
Neuropixels recordings from the language-dominant prefrontal cortex reveal a structured organization of planned words, an encoding cascade of phonetic representations by prefrontal neurons in humans and a cellular process that could support the production of speech.
- Arjun R. Khanna
- , William Muñoz
- & Ziv M. Williams
-
News |
Signs of ‘transmissible’ Alzheimer’s seen in people who received growth hormone
The findings support a controversial hypothesis that proteins related to the neurodegenerative disease can be ‘seeded’ in the brain through material taken from cadavers.
- Carissa Wong
-
News |
Obesity drugs have another superpower: taming inflammation
The blockbuster medications that reduce body weight also reduce inflammation in organs such as the brain, raising hopes that they can treat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
News |
This fast-living marsupial chooses sex over sleep — and dies young
Male antechinus make the most of their single breeding season by forgoing shut-eye.
- Sara Reardon
-
Article |
Cortical regulation of helping behaviour towards others in pain
A study describes the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in coding and regulating helping behaviour exhibited by mice towards others experiencing pain.
- Mingmin Zhang
- , Ye Emily Wu
- & Weizhe Hong
-
Article |
A dedicated hypothalamic oxytocin circuit controls aversive social learning
In mice, the neural mechanisms underlying aversive social learning, specifically avoidance and fear after defeat, involve oxytocin signalling in the anterior subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral part.
- Takuya Osakada
- , Rongzhen Yan
- & Dayu Lin
-
Correspondence |
Funders must get behind brain project data sharing
- Helena Ledmyr
- , Mathew Abrams
- & Randy McIntosh
-
News |
How does chronic stress harm the gut? New clues emerge
A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.
- Max Kozlov
-
Article |
Top-down control of flight by a non-canonical cortico-amygdala pathway
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.
- Chandrashekhar D. Borkar
- , Claire E. Stelly
- & Jonathan P. Fadok
-
News Feature |
The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?
There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
Article
| Open AccessAlternative splicing of latrophilin-3 controls synapse formation
Latrophilin-3 organizes synapses through a convergent dual-pathway mechanism in which Gαs signalling is activated and phase-separated postsynaptic protein scaffolds are recruited.
- Shuai Wang
- , Chelsea DeLeon
- & Thomas C. Südhof
-
News & Views |
From the archive: the royal ‘we’, and an experiment in telegraphy
Snippets from Nature’s past.
-
News |
Medical AI falters when assessing patients it hasn’t seen
Physicians rely on algorithms for personalized medicine — but an analysis of schizophrenia trials shows that the tools fail to adapt to new data sets.
- Miryam Naddaf
-
Research Briefing |
Observing mammalian cerebellum development through an evolutionary lens
Tracking the gene-expression profiles of individual cerebellar cells during development in humans, mice and opossums revealed evolutionarily conserved as well as species-specific cellular and molecular features.
-
Research Briefing |
Drain ‘pipes’ behind the nose clear cerebrospinal fluid from the brain
This study reveals a distinctive network of lymphatic vessels at the back of the nose that serves as a major hub for the outflow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to deep cervical lymph nodes in the neck. These deep cervical lymphatics remain intact with ageing, and their pharmacological activation enhanced CSF drainage in mice.
-
Nature Podcast |
The Nature Podcast highlights of 2023
The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
-
Nature Podcast |
What were some of the biggest stories of 2023? Join us for the Nature Podcast quiz!
In a game of twenty questions our contestants stretch their memories to remember some of the science stories that made headlines this year.
- Shamini Bundell
-
Article
| Open AccessProtracted neuronal recruitment in the temporal lobes of young children
A stream of young neurons migrating into the entorhinal cortex (EC) continues postnatally in humans, but not in macaques; these young neurons, which belong to a unique class of local circuit cells, continue to be recruited in the EC during infancy and early childhood.
- Marcos Assis Nascimento
- , Sean Biagiotti
- & Shawn F. Sorrells
-
News & Views Forum |
2D materials ratchet up biorealism in computing
A transistor made from atomically thin materials mimics the way in which connections between neurons are strengthened by activity. Two perspectives reveal why physicists and neuroscientists share equal enthusiasm for this feat of engineering.
- Frank H. L. Koppens
- , James B. Aimone
- & Frances S. Chance
-
News & Views |
Mysterious ultraslow and ordered activity observed in the cortex
Neurons with a role in navigation fire sequentially in mice, forming patterns that repeat every minute or so — but which are neither spatially organized, nor related to any visible behaviour.
- Gilles Laurent
-
Article
| Open AccessMinute-scale oscillatory sequences in medial entorhinal cortex
Neural population activity in the medial entorhinal cortex of mice can be organized into ultraslow oscillatory sequences, with periods extending up to the minute range.
- Soledad Gonzalo Cogno
- , Horst A. Obenhaus
- & Edvard I. Moser
-
Article
| Open AccessRNA-mediated symmetry breaking enables singular olfactory receptor choice
Messenger RNAs transcribed from olfactory-receptor genes may have non-coding functions that include recruitment of transcriptional enhancers and inhibition of potentially thousands of competing alleles to ensure stable transcription of a single allele.
- Ariel D. Pourmorady
- , Elizaveta V. Bashkirova
- & Stavros Lomvardas
-
News & Views |
Plastic pollution, viral evolution and drowned coasts: wrapping up a year of remarkable science
Highlights from News & Views published in late 2023.
-
Article |
Cortical reactivations predict future sensory responses
Offline cortical reactivations predict the gradual drift and separation in sensory cortical response patterns and may enhance sensory discrimination.
- Nghia D. Nguyen
- , Andrew Lutas
- & Mark L. Andermann
-
Editorial |
Why mega brain project teams need to be talking to each other
As large-scale neuroscience projects start to yield results, sharing data standards will become increasingly important.
-
Spotlight |
I study depression in the lab and advocate for mental health in academia
Annapoorna P. K. tells Nature about her work on understanding depression both in and outside the lab.
- Pratik Pawar
-
News & Views Forum |
Cellular atlases of the entire mouse brain
In a huge collaborative effort, millions of cells in the mouse brain have been mapped in detail. Two scientists examine the resulting wealth of insights into gene regulation in brain cells, neuronal connections and how our own brains evolved.
- Maria Antonietta Tosches
- & Heather J. Lee
-
News |
How our brains decode speech: special neurons process certain sounds
Wire-thin probes inserted into the brains of living people show the parts played by individual neurons.
- Saima Sidik
-
News |
Neurons responsible for poor sleep and stress found in mice
Frightened mice sleep poorly. Researchers have identified at least some of the neurons responsible.
- Jude Coleman
-
Article
| Open AccessDynamic behaviour restructuring mediates dopamine-dependent credit assignment
Initial dopamine self-stimulations reinforced not only the stimulation-producing target action, but also actions similar to the target action and actions that occurred a few seconds before stimulation, and repeated pairings led to a gradual refinement of the behavioural repertoire to home in on the target actions.
- Jonathan C. Y. Tang
- , Vitor Paixao
- & Rui M. Costa
-
Article
| Open AccessSingle-cell DNA methylome and 3D multi-omic atlas of the adult mouse brain
Methylome-based clustering and cross-modality integration with companion datasets from the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network enabled the construction of a 3D multi-omic genome atlas of the adult mouse brain featuring thousands of cell-type-specific profiles.
- Hanqing Liu
- , Qiurui Zeng
- & Joseph R. Ecker
-
Article
| Open AccessA high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial atlas of cell types in the whole mouse brain
A transcriptomic cell-type atlas of the whole adult mouse brain with ~5,300 clusters built from single-cell and spatial transcriptomic datasets with more than eight million cells reveals remarkable cell type diversity across the brain and unique cell type characteristics of different brain regions.
- Zizhen Yao
- , Cindy T. J. van Velthoven
- & Hongkui Zeng
-
Article
| Open AccessA transcriptomic taxonomy of mouse brain-wide spinal projecting neurons
In this study, the authors develop a comprehensive taxonomy of brain-wide SPNs, identifying several novel subsets via their transcriptional signatures.
- Carla C. Winter
- , Anne Jacobi
- & Zhigang He
-
Article
| Open AccessLarge-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex
High-density single-neuron recordings show diverse tuning for acoustic and phonetic features across layers in human auditory speech cortex.
- Matthew K. Leonard
- , Laura Gwilliams
- & Edward F. Chang
-
Article
| Open AccessMolecularly defined and spatially resolved cell atlas of the whole mouse brain
A comprehensive cell atlas of the whole mouse brain with high molecular and spatial resolution is generated.
- Meng Zhang
- , Xingjie Pan
- & Xiaowei Zhuang
-
Article
| Open AccessConserved and divergent gene regulatory programs of the mammalian neocortex
A single-cell multiomics analysis of over 200,000 cells of the primary motor cortex of human, macaque, marmoset and mouse shows that divergence of transcription factor expression corresponds to species-specific epigenome landscapes, and conserved and divergent gene regulatory features are reflected in the evolution of the three-dimensional genome.
- Nathan R. Zemke
- , Ethan J. Armand
- & Bing Ren
Browse broader subjects
Browse narrower subjects
- Auditory system
- Blood–brain barrier
- Cell death in the nervous system
- Cellular neuroscience
- Circadian rhythms and sleep
- Cognitive ageing
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Computational neuroscience
- Development of the nervous system
- Diseases of the nervous system
- Emotion
- Epigenetics in the nervous system
- Feeding behaviour
- Genetics of the nervous system
- Glial biology
- Gliogenesis
- Gustatory system
- Ion channels in the nervous system
- Learning and memory
- Molecular neuroscience
- Motivation
- Motor control
- Myelin biology and repair
- Neural ageing
- Neural circuits
- Neuro–vascular interactions
- Neurogenesis
- Neuroimmunology
- Neuronal physiology
- Neurotrophic factors
- Oculomotor system
- Olfactory system
- Peripheral nervous system
- Regeneration and repair in the nervous system
- Reward
- Sensorimotor processing
- Sensory processing
- Sexual behaviour
- Social behaviour
- Social neuroscience
- Somatosensory system
- Spine regulation and structure
- Stem cells in the nervous system
- Stress and resilience
- Synaptic plasticity
- Synaptic transmission
- Transporters in the nervous system
- Visual system