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Forkosh, Karamihalev and colleagues present a framework for inferring stable traits from a broad range of behavioral readouts and apply it to capture biologically relevant individual differences in mice.
Findling, Skvortsova et al. find that a large fraction of non-greedy decisions that humans make in volatile environments do not stem from exploration but from the limited precision of learning, and further identify its neurophysiological correlates.
The Drosophila neuropeptide leucokinin mediates hunger- and thirst-dependent expression of learned behaviors. State-relevant selection of appropriate memory emerges from competition between leucokinin and other modulators onto dopaminergic neurons.
Chow et al. show that high blood levels of insulin in prediabetic conditions are linked to saturated insulin levels in the brain. Chronic insulin exposure leads to insulin resistance, cell cycle reentry and premature aging, corresponding to senescence-like pathological changes in neurons.
Krabbe, Paradiso et al. show that amygdala VIP interneurons are activated by instructive cues for associative learning. These interneurons provide a mandatory disinhibitory signal permitting plasticity in response to unexpected salient events.
Liu et al. show that microglial process surveillance is restrained in awake mice, and that reduced neuronal activity due to anesthesia, sensory deprivation or optogenetic inhibition increases microglial dynamics via norepinephrine signaling.
Stowell, Sipe et al. describe how norepinephrine signaling to microglia during wakefulness influences the dynamic movement of microglial processes, affecting both microglial interactions with neurons and experience-dependent plasticity.
In offspring exposed to THC in utero, molecular, synaptic and circuit reorganizations lead to a hyperdopaminergic phenotype and behavioral susceptibility. The neurosteroid pregnenolone restores both dopamine function and abnormal behavior.
The authors found that activity of the same ventral tegmental area dopaminergic axons in basal amygdala increased following learned cues predicting either food rewards or punishments, in a manner consistent with signaling of motivational salience.
The authors report that the ALS-associated gene FUS stimulates transcription of acetylcholine receptor subunit genes in subsynaptic myonuclei. ALS mutations distort this mechanism, inducing muscle-intrinsic toxicity that may contribute to dying-back motor neuronopathy.
Control of movements can be understood in terms of the interplay between a controller, a simulator and an estimator. Egger et. al. show that cortical neurons establish the same building blocks to control cognitive states in the absence of movement.
Frank et al. find that a subregion in the zebrafish homolog of olfactory cortex maps odor space onto a representation of valence. Learning shapes this odor-to-valence map through plasticity processes that modify inhibition.
Using intracranial recordings in humans, the authors found decision conflict-related effects on firing rate in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), on spike-phase coupling in the dACC, and on spike-field coherence in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
The authors use a linear model to reveal how neural activity patterns are related to cognition or movements. They find that uninstructed movements dominate single-cell and population activity throughout the brain, outpacing task-related activity.
By developing layer-specific functional MRI techniques for a high-order cognitive brain area, Finn et al. dissociate activity in superficial and deeper cortical layers during different periods of a working memory task in human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Microglia and astrocytes propagate neurodegeneration by releasing fragmented and dysfunctional mitochondria into the neuronal milieu. Inhibiting pathological fragmentation of glial mitochondria blunts neuroinflammation and increases neuroprotection.
In leukocyte transcriptomes from toddlers with ASD, Gazestani et al. find a perturbed gene network that is involved in fetal brain development and lies downstream of ASD risk genes, and whose dysregulation level correlates with ASD symptom severity.
Sun and Jin et al. report that a population of neurons in the subiculum form a pathway for visual information to reach the hippocampus and impact place-specific activity. Activation of these neurons promotes the formation of object-location memories.
Huang and colleagues functionally map a brain circuit connecting the amygdala and the spinal cord that is altered after nerve injury and contributes to chronic pain.
Ruff and Cohen find that the prominent hypotheses about how attention improves perception do not account for behavioral improvements. Instead, their results suggest that attention reshapes sensory representations so the relevant information guides behavior.