In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

Many animals rely on internal representations of continuous variables such as head direction to guide behavior. Noorman et al. show how such representations can be accurately maintained in small neural networks, countering decades of theoretical intuition.

Siddiqi et al. identified lesion locations that reduced probability of PTSD. These were connected to a brain circuit in which increased connectivity was associated with PTSD, thus revealing a PTSD target circuit for therapeutic brain stimulation.

The authors review current knowledge of the molecular identity and functions of the dura, arachnoid and pial layers of meninges and controversial aspects of meningeal biology that deserve further study to resolve ongoing debates in the field.

Bayati et al. discovered that sequential treatment of iPSC-derived dopaminergic neurons with α-synuclein fibrils and proinflammatory cytokines leads to the formation of Lewy body–like inclusions, through the downregulation of lysosomal proteins.

In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

Many animals rely on internal representations of continuous variables such as head direction to guide behavior. Noorman et al. show how such representations can be accurately maintained in small neural networks, countering decades of theoretical intuition.

Matoba, Le, Valone et al. characterized context-dependent genetic effects on gene regulatory activity during Wnt stimulation, finding that genetic variant function during neurodevelopment patterning can lead to differences in adult brain traits.

Chen et al. show that subtypes of immune cells in prenatal human brain promote angiogenesis in the germinal matrix. Conversely, in preterm infants, proinflammatory immune cells disrupt angiogenesis and promote germinal matrix hemorrhage.

Jung et al. show that shelter experience boosts dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens, generating a goal-location memory. Reactivating a neuronal ensemble developed from shelter experience enables memory-guided navigation to the goal during escape.