Articles

Defective neoangiogenesis and blood–brain barrier leakiness are pathological hallmarks of neuroinflammation. Here the authors show that vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) promotes venous endothelial cell proliferation, resulting in the formation of leaky vessels around demyelinating lesions in multiple sclerosis and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Brain functions require a constant supply of glucose. However, the brain energy stores are unclear. Here, the authors show that oligodendroglial fatty acid metabolism can be an energy reserve for white matter axons, supporting their function.

Muir et al. explore threat discrimination in male and female mice and find that, despite similar behavioral acquisition, there are surprising sex differences in the neural encoding that drives suppression of reward seeking under threat.

The spatial relationship between neuronal and vascular activity remains highly debated. In this study, the authors used multiscale optical imaging to show how vascular architecture limits the spatial specificity of neurovascular coupling.

The study of neural plasticity has focused on excitatory neural connections, but inhibitory connections can also change. Learning at inhibitory synapses may support high-level cognitive phenomena, such as selecting information for memory storage.

Comprehensive profiling of a circumventricular organ with leaky blood vessels, and comparison to cortex vasculature reveal that blood–brain barrier heterogeneity reflects differences in endothelial cells and their interactions with perivascular cells.

The authors find a newly evolved progenitor domain extends and expands spinal motor neurogenesis in humans.

Activation of nested, but not discrete, neural circuits drives alternative courtship songs in male Drosophila melanogaster, providing further insight into how the nervous system can drive the same motor systems to rapidly switch between different actions.

Using human cerebrospinal fluid proteomics, the authors found that proteins associated with Aβ pathology in Alzheimer disease were mainly expressed in glial cells, whereas those associated with tau tangle were linked to metabolism and mainly expressed in neurons.

Goodman et al. found that Tau is critical for ROS-induced lipid droplet formation in glia from flies and mammals. Too much or too little glial Tau disrupts lipid droplets, leaving the glia susceptible to neuronal ROS-induced damage and causing phenotypes in tau^−/− flies.

Understanding brain development and systems linked to behavioral change is a key goal in population neuroscience. The authors show the ventral attention network is key for brain development and cognitive ability in cross-culture longitudinal cohorts.

The active zone primes synaptic vesicles and clusters voltage-gated Ca²⁺ channels fast neurotransmitter release. Here the authors dissect the underlying molecular architecture and show that distinct protein machineries execute these functions.

What makes the brain maintain voluntary exercise despite attractive alternative options such as eating? Tesmer et al. show that orexin/hypocretin neurons are crucial for implementing the underlying valuation of eating versus running in mice.

Neuronal activity contributes to synapse formation and plasticity. Here the authors demonstrate that activity stimulates developmental programs to directly modulate synapse formation.

Astrocyte diversity is greatly influenced by local environmental modulation. Wang et al. report a critical role for astrocytic primary cilia in transmitting local cues that drive the region-specific diversification of astrocytes within the developing mouse brain.

Studying GnRH neuroendocrine cells in the mouse olfactory bulb (GnRH^OB neurons), Decoster et al. show that these cells respond to female odors and their activation regulates males’ female-odor preference and mating behavior.

Ehret et al. uncover neural activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex that link sensory stimuli to learned behavioral responses by isolating interpretable activity patterns that are shared among mice performing the same task.

Liu et al. unraveled several hippocampal neural ensemble coding schemes that efficiently represent numerous daily experiences during sleep by prioritizing the most recent and earliest events, multiplexing co-representations and compressing day-long sequences.

Coordinated neuronal activity may mediate memory in hippocampal CA1. Here, the authors use an array of machine-learning classifiers to reveal how higher-order population dynamics and learning-induced spine plasticity are disrupted in amnestic mice.

Perineuronal nets stabilize synapses inhibiting synaptic plasticity. Here, the authors show that perineuronal nets act as a diffusion barrier facilitating astrocytic clearance of synaptically released ions and neurotransmitters.