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A genetic study of problematic alcohol use in 435,563 individuals, including data from the Million Veteran Program, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and UK Biobank, found many novel risk loci and provided new insights into trait biology.
Assessing residual consciousness in unresponsive patients is a major clinical concern. Gui et al. demonstrate that EEG-based language assessment can objectively characterize states of consciousness and predict outcomes in individual patients.
Place cell responses are strongly modulated by context, allowing the hippocampus to effectively encode different environments. Electrical recordings show that the context-dependent representation of environmental features is present in the CA3 subregion and is inherited by CA1.
Learning new associations that reappraise the behavioral significance of previously irrelevant cues requires gamma-frequency synchronization between parvalbumin interneurons in the left and right prefrontal cortex.
Shen et al. report that prolonged obesity is associated with cerebrovascular dysfunction and Tak1 activation in brainstem microglia. Pharmacological inhibition or genetic depletion of Tak1 restores cerebrovascular function in obese mice.
Medulloblastomas lacking p53 do not express surface class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC-I) and are resistant to immune rejection. Tumor necrosis factor rescues MHC-I expression and synergizes with immune checkpoint inhibitors to promote rejection.
Precisely timed motor learning promotes remyelination in the motor cortex by enhancing oligodendrogenesis and stimulating mature oligodendrocytes to generate new myelin, presenting mature oligodendrocytes as new targets in remyelinating therapies.
Hua and Chen et al. show that general anesthesia activates a distinct population of central amygdala neurons and that these neurons can potently suppress pain responses through their widespread projections to many pain-processing centers in the brain.
Cregg et al. find that a specific population of brainstem neurons act to control left–right turning of locomotor movements in mammals through distinct axial- and limb-based mechanisms. This turning pathway is the dominant system for natural directional movements.
The authors establish the claustrum-Cre transgenic mouse line and demonstrate that the claustrum orchestrates cortical slow-wave activity by synchronously driving the inhibitory interneurons in widespread cortical areas.
Marshall et al. show that regions of the genome adopt a noncanonical Z-DNA state in the prefrontal cortex in response to fear learning and that binding of Adar1 reduces Z-DNA during extinction learning, which is required for memory flexibility.
Using fNIRS hyperscanning in three-versus-three-person intergroup competitions, this study shows that in-group bonding and within-group synchronization of reduced dorsolateral prefrontal activity escalate intergroup conflict.
The authors describe a thalamic population, innervated by multimodal brainstem inputs, that forms a CS–US association prior to the lateral amygdala. Its fast and plastic signal defines an amygdala activity pattern necessary for adaptive fear learning.
Flanigan et al. show that activation of inhibitory neurons in the lateral habenula by the neuropeptide orexin (hypocretin) promotes both inter-male aggression and conditioned place preference for contexts associated with winning aggressive contests.
Lopez-Persem et al. used intracranial recordings in people with epilepsy to uncover key functional properties of neural value signals that might explain irrational choice behavior.
The most common genetic cause of ALS and frontal temporal dementia—hexanucleotide repeat expansion in C9orf72—is shown to provoke disease via synergy of gain of toxicity(ies) from repeat-encoded RNAs/dipeptide repeat proteins and reduction in the C9ORF72 protein.
Hippocampal neurons track events as abstract units of episodic experience. These event representations can be transferred between different experiences and are separately manipulable from hippocampal representations of continuous changes in space.
Kaplan et al. characterize the physiological properties of cells in the primate ventral pallidum. They employ a reinforcement learning model to demonstrate that the different neuronal populations play distinct roles in the basal ganglia network.
Eschbach, Fushiki et al. combine synaptic-resolution circuit mapping, functional analyses and modeling to reveal circuit motifs that regulate dopaminergic neuron activity and may increase associative learning task performance and flexibility.
Jaffe et al. profile the granule cell layer of the human hippocampus and find unique molecular associations for aging and genetic variation, as well as diagnosis with schizophrenia and its genetic risk, that were previously undiscovered in homogenate tissue.