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This study investigates self-paced actions in freely foraging macaques. Findings highlight continuously evolving neural components that capture beliefs about latent reward dynamics, which are crucial for informed decision-making in a natural setting.
C9orf72 ALS/FTD polyGR and polyPR knock-in mice show cortical hyperexcitability and motor neuron loss accompanied by an increase in extracellular matrix proteins in the spinal cord that is conserved in patient iPS cell-derived neurons and is neuroprotective.
Sias et al. show that dopamine projections to the basolateral amygdala drive the reward learning that supports the predictions and inferences needed for adaptive decision-making.
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.
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.
Astrocytes have important roles in disease. However, modulation of their reactive state is challenging. Here the authors present a phenotypic in vitro screening platform they can leverage to identify chemical compounds able to modulate astrocyte reactivity in vitro and in vivo.
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.
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.
Haynes et al. report a daily, sleep-dependent neuron–glia lipid metabolic cycle. ApoE-dependent lipid transfer from neurons to glia protects neurons from oxidative damage during waking, and lipids are cleared from glia during sleep.
Despite a long history of studying perceptual biases in neuroscience, many of the biases remain difficult to explain and even appear to be contradictory. The authors propose a unifying theory that sheds new light on such puzzling perceptual biases.
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.
Minakuchi et al. find that separable inhibitory inputs to a critical hypothalamic aggression-control node can influence the evolution of an aggressive state by independently modulating either the motivational phase or the action phase.
The basal ganglia control the execution of motor actions. However, how they engage spinal motor networks is unclear. Here the authors show that the basal ganglia–spinal cord pathway controls locomotor asymmetries in adult mice.
Using in vivo calcium imaging and cell-type-specific pharmacology, we reveal that synaptic inhibition in the cerebellar granule cell layer supports pattern separation and cerebellum-dependent behavior.
Mohebi et al. report that dopamine (DA) pulses in different rat striatal subregions signal prediction errors across different timescales. In this way, one learning process may achieve a range of adaptive behaviors.
The authors show that sound-evoked activity in mouse visual cortex consists of both an auditory and a motor component. These have different temporal and spatial profiles (across neurons and layers) but limited impact on ongoing visual processing.
Using dopamine photometry and reinforcement learning models in mice flexibly acquiring cue–action–outcome associations with rule switches, Bernklau et al. show that striatal dopamine reflects an animal’s current understanding of their task.
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 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.
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.