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A new spatial transcriptomic approach reveals astrocyte heterogeneity across layers of the mammalian cerebral cortex. Astrocytes diversify into superficial-, mid- and deep-layer subtypes distinct from neuronal laminae, yet instructed by neuronal cues.
Mohammad et al. show that prenatal alcohol exposure increases Kcnn2 activity in the mouse cerebral cortex. Blockade of Kcnn2 improves learning deficits in a mouse model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Chen, Deister et al. show that Shank3B-knockout mice display hypersensitivity to tactile sensory stimulation and that dysfunction of interneurons in somatosensory cortex contributes to the sensory hyper-reactivity in this mouse model of autism.
Zhou et al. unveil a novel role for activated microglia and macrophages during wound healing after CNS injury. Microglia promote corralling and form a protective barrier at the injury penumbra via the axon guidance receptor Plexin-B2.
Implicit learning increases the fidelity of performance during motor learning by acting to adaptively clean up the noise resulting from a low-fidelity explicit strategy.
Dal Monte et al. investigate neuronal synchrony between the primate amygdala and the anterior cingulate gyrus during social decision-making. Highly specialized coordination between these areas promotes prosocial, compared to antisocial, decisions.
Prior stressful experience affects subsequent behavior even in different situations. Daviu et al. demonstrate that CRHPVN neurons encode stress controllability and contribute to shifts between active and passive innate defensive strategies.
Alpha-synuclein fibrils can disrupt the enteric nervous system, which is mitigated by peripheral GBA1 gene transfer via systemic AAVs. Aging increases susceptibility to α-synuclein pathology progression from the gut to the brain.
Rodriguez et al. define a native role for RAN translation and CGG repeats in regulating mGluR-dependent fragile X protein (FMRP) synthesis. RAN-blocking antisense oligonucleotides increase FMRP and improve survival of neurons from patients with repeat expansions.
Oligodendrocyte precursor cells divide or differentiate in response to external stimuli to control their numbers and to form new myelin. Using zebrafish, we show that these two functions are accomplished by distinct subgroups of cells.
Fear learning induces myelin formation. In the absence of new myelination, remote fear memory and neurophysiology of fear memory circuits are impaired. Conversely, administration of the pro-myelinating drug clemastine enhances remote fear memory.
The authors establish inducible Cxcr4-CreER-based fate mapping as a universal means to identify bone-marrow-derived myeloid cells in the injured brain and demonstrate that Cxcr4 deficiency affects the innate immune response and outcome after stroke.
The authors identify an impaired myelination signature from the brains of mouse models of Pitt–Hopkins syndrome and show that it is shared in the postmortem brains of people with autism.
Microglia in the aging hippocampus accumulate lipid droplets, and are functionally impaired and inflamed. Lipid droplet formation in microglia is regulated by genes linked to neurodegeneration such as progranulin.
High concentrations of sodium are normally unpalatable. This study shows a neural population in the brainstem that suppresses appetite for sodium. Reducing the activity of these neurons can drive ingestion of high concentrations of sodium.
The authors measure evoked activity and perform dense reconstruction of the olfactory bulb wiring diagram in a zebrafish larva, uncovering a mechanism for whitening, a computation that decorrelates activity for pattern classification by memory networks.
Rees et al. show that de novo mutations in the gene SLC6A1, and more broadly across evolutionary constrained genes and genes implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders, increase the risk for developing schizophrenia.
Gao et al. provide evidence that two major classes of neurons exist in the paraventricular thalamus. One of these, termed type II PVT neurons, belongs to a previously ignored cell population that relays arousal information to the infralimbic cortex.
In this study of protein-coding de novo mutations in schizophrenia, researchers found only a small contribution toward overall risk, coming predominantly from genes under negative selection and highly expressed in the brain.