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Within the enigmatic depths of an aquatic universe, divers use flashlights to reveal the hidden contours of an uncharted seabed that teems with wondrous vegetation. In an analogous exploration, Hollunder et al. describe how invasive brain stimulation delivered to deep-seated brain nuclei may act as a beacon. Using deep brain stimulation (DBS), they show that the frontal cortex can be segregated into distinct circuits that become dysfunctional in four different brain disorders. Their topographical map may shed light on more-precise brain-circuit therapeutics.
As Nature Neuroscience celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are having conversations with both established leaders in the field and those earlier in their careers to discuss how the field has evolved and where it is heading. This month we are talking to Nancy Ip, Morningside Professor of Life Science and president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. We discussed her path from academia to industry and back, her experiences as a working mother and how she has helped scientific research in Hong Kong to flourish.
Muller et al. demonstrate that reward signals recorded from the frontal cortex of nonhuman primates exhibit a population-based scheme for learning probability distributions over reward values. This study provides evidence that neural signals outside of the midbrain reflect the principles of distributional reinforcement-learning theory.
Both caloric restriction and obesity affect autoimmune diseases. The activation of brainstem neurons in the ventrolateral medulla (VLM) with fasting suppresses experimental autoimmune diseases. Stimulation of VLM neurons alters T cell traffic by redistributing immune cells to bone marrow and reduces inflammatory cytokine production, thus providing therapy of experimental autoimmunity.
Long COVID has remained an on-going public health issue in the years following the global pandemic. Here, we report blood–brain barrier disruption in patients with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and brain fog, and patients presenting with long COVID, brain fog and cognitive decline, compared to those with long COVID without any neurological symptoms.
This research elucidates that oligodendrocytes detect and respond to fast axonal spiking through K+ signaling, and that Kir4.1 channel activation has a pivotal role. This activity-driven interaction regulates axonal metabolic support by oligodendrocytes and influences lactate delivery and glucose metabolism in axons, which is essential for sustaining axonal health.
A widespread group of cerebellar projections form monosynaptic excitatory synapses with neurons throughout the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). These projections contain information associated with movement and reward and can rapidly increase SNc neuron activity, and thereby basal ganglia dopamine levels, which contribute to movement initiation, vigor and reward processing.
Brain connections modulated by 534 deep-brain-stimulation electrodes revealed a gradient of circuits involved in dystonia, Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Together, these circuits begin to describe the human ‘dysfunctome’, a library of dysfunctional circuits that lead to various brain disorders.
Muller et al. show that some neurons in the cortex learn faster from better-than-expected outcomes compared to worse-than-expected ones; others do the converse, resulting in simultaneous optimism and pessimism, as predicted by distributional reinforcement learning.
Radke et al. found an interferon response in the brainstem nuclei of acute COVID-19 that, in addition to the inflammatory reaction, spreads throughout the vascular unit altering glial cells and resolves in late disease states in the absence of brain infection.
Long COVID is a major public health issue since 2020 and exhibits frequent neurological symptoms. Greene et al. propose that brain fog results from leaky brain blood vessels and a hyperactive immune system, shedding light on this phenomenon.
Looser et al. reveal that oligodendrocytes detect and respond to axonal activity using K+ signaling to regulate vital metabolic support and maintain axon health.
Using in vivo two-photon imaging and electron microscopy, Haruwaka, Ying et al. show that microglia transiently boost post-anesthesia neuronal activity in somatosensory cortex by physically shielding inhibitory inputs during emergence from anesthesia.
Wang et al. found that catecholaminergic neurons in the ventrolateral medulla regulate fasting-induced T cell redistribution. Similar to fasting, these neurons suppressed autoimmune inflammation in mouse models of multiple sclerosis and psoriasis.
The primary somatosensory cortex and central nucleus of the amygdala project to the spleen via the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus nerve and regulate the T helper 2 (TH2) immune cell response in models of neuropathic pain.
Tasnim et al. show that ASD-associated genes act in different compartments of somatosensory circuits and that differences in developmental timing of ASD gene function and circuit maturation contribute to phenotypic heterogeneity across ASD models.
Monosynaptic cerebellar projections to the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) increase the activity of SNc neurons and striatal dopamine levels. These projections may convey information related to movement initiation, vigor and reward processing.
Wang et al. identify a molecularly defined tetra-synaptic pathway for olfaction-evoked innate fear and anxiety in mice. These findings reveal a forebrain-to-hindbrain neural substrate for sensory-triggered fear and anxiety that bypasses the amygdala.
Banerjee and colleagues find that activity within the orofacial motor cortex in a highly vocal rodent reflects different features of the produced song, forming a hierarchical control network with downstream structures to guide vocal production.
The authors find that neuronal subpopulations in lateral entorhinal cortex provide reward-centric information during spatial navigation, which may contextualize spatial information from medial entorhinal cortex for forming hippocampal episodic memories.
This study reports a motif of local field potentials that maps onto the anatomical layers of the cortex, is preserved across macaque cortical areas and across primates and may represent a ubiquitous layer-based and frequency-based cortical mechanism.
This paper shows that memory engrams are dynamic: neurons drop in and out as engrams become selective during memory consolidation. Inhibition and inhibitory plasticity are crucial for the expression and emergence of memory selectivity, respectively.
Hollunder et al. identify networks where deep brain stimulation reduces symptoms for Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, dystonia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This revealed a fronto-rostral topography that segregates the frontal cortex.
Using single-neuron recordings in patients with epilepsy, Kunz et al. show that stimulus-specific neurons activate together during hippocampal ripples when humans encode and retrieve associative memories.