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Carbo-Tano and colleagues investigate the mesencephalic locomotor region in larval zebrafish and its role in triggering forward locomotion by activating specific sets of hindbrain V2a reticulospinal neurons.
Spontaneous population activity bursts promote the development of brain circuits. This study shows that single GABAergic hub neurons exert a strong influence on spontaneous and sensory-evoked population bursts in the mouse barrel cortex.
The authors used precision functional imaging and computational modeling to uncover the structure of perceptual odor coding in the human brain. Olfactory areas differ in the granularity, dimensionality and subjectivity of perceptual coding.
Jorfi et al. developed a three-dimensional human neuroimmune axis model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The authors demonstrated an increase in T cell infiltration into AD cultures, which led to microglial activation and exacerbation of neurodegeneration.
Sensorimotor inputs are first compressed before being routed to the cerebellum and similar brain structures. The authors develop a theory to understand the computational role of this compression, leading to anatomical and functional predictions.
In a birth cohort, Holz et al. found widespread structural brain changes at the age of 25 years as a function of adversity. This pattern was replicated at the age of 33 years and in another cohort. Individual-level volume reductions on top of this pattern predicted anxiety.
The authors show that choice information is relayed from the ventrolateral orbitofrontal cortex to the dorsomedial striatum to lead accurate economic decision-making.
A new brain mapping approach tailored to individual people reveals that volume changes in psychiatric illness occur in highly variable locations across individuals, but that these differences often aggregate within common brain systems.
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.
Organoid modeling of human forebrain development reveals an opposite imbalance in excitatory neuron number in macrocephalic and normocephalic autistic probands, stemming from divergent expression of transcription factors driving cell fate.
Dominance behavior can influence social hierarchy. Here the authors show that cortical astrocytes can enhance excitatory and reduce inhibitory transmission via release of glutamate and ATP, which modulate dominance behavior, affecting the establishment of social hierarchy, among adult male mice.
The authors establish a connection between functional subtypes and genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons in mice and demonstrate that molecular expression patterns can serve as a common framework to dissect dopaminergic functions.
Tao et al. show that depressive-like behaviors in a female mouse model of ovarian hormone withdrawal can be attributed to downregulation of neuronal activity in Esr1 (estrogen receptor-1)-expressing GABAergic neurons in the medial preoptic area.
The mechanisms underlying motor arrest are unclear. Here, the authors show that Chx10+ neurons in the mouse pedunculopontine nucleus control global motor arrest in a pattern of pause (movement on hold) and play (movement resuming from the exact position it paused) likely in response to salient and nonthreatening environmental cues.
Complex spikes (CSs) driven by inferior olivary neurons have crucial roles in motor control. Wang et al. identified an excitatory pathway from the cerebellar nuclei to the inferior olive that drives rapid feedback CSs and contributes to the fine control of ocular and body movements.
The authors derive a neural network theory of systems consolidation to assess why some memories consolidate more than others. They propose that brains regulate consolidation to optimize generalization, so only predictable memory components consolidate.
Chandelier cells organize neural coding and mediate learning by establishing inhibitory circuit motifs over individual pyramidal neurons and suppressing irrelevant activity via adaptive axo-axonic synaptic plasticity, subserving efficient computation.
The factors that regulate astrogenesis during development are not completely understood. Here the authors propose a data-driven framework to leverage transcriptomic data to identify ligand–receptor pairs promoting astrogenesis and validate their effects in human cortical organoids and fetal progenitor cells.
The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying major depressive disorder are unclear. Here, the authors report cell type- and cortical layer-specific gene expression changes and identify one microglia subpopulation associated with depressive-like behavior in female non-human primates.