Articles

Chen et al. describe a new subtype of reactive astrocyte formed by APOE-mediated lipid accumulation in individuals with epilepsy and mouse models. These reactive astrocytes aggravate seizure symptoms and could serve as new therapeutic targets for epilepsy.

The mechanisms of remyelination are unclear. Here, the authors develop and use two-photon apoptotic targeted ablation and show a form of rapid synchronous remyelination mediated by a distinct subset of OPCs that can occur in adult mice but not in aging.

The authors compare three classes of models—acoustic, semantic and sound-to-event deep neural network—to determine which can best link specific features of auditory stimuli to predicted functional magnetic resonance imaging responses in auditory cortical regions.

The caudal ventrolateral medulla was thought to be involved in pain control, but its pathway was unknown. Here, Gu et al. identify the molecular components of a caudal ventrolateral medulla–locus coeruleus–spinal cord pathway and show it has a role in counter-stimulus pain control.

Buch et al. used machine learning to identify brain–behavior dimensions that define four robust ASD subtypes linked to distinct molecular pathways and that suggest personalized therapeutic targets for circuit-based neuromodulation and pharmacotherapy.

The authors find that 40-Hz flickering light does not suppress Aβ, activate microglia or engage native gamma oscillations. Thus, visual flicker stimulation may not be a viable mechanism for altering AD pathology and modulating deep structures.

Information flowing among connected peers shapes our beliefs and decisions. Jiang et al. show that learning on social networks is biased toward well-connected individuals, with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex tracking connectedness on the network that routes learning.

Tovote and colleagues present an analytical framework that integrates threat-evoked inter-related behavioral and cardiac adjustments and allows identification of short- and long-lasting defensive states and their midbrain neuronal mediators.

Microglia mediate aberrant synapse engulfment in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here the authors show a perivascular cells-to-microglia crosstalk that induces microglia phagocytic state resulting in synapse engulfment in two mouse models of AD.

The authors map thalamic synapses onto layer 2/3 mouse visual cortex neurons, showing they are sparse, small and heterogeneously distributed. Modeling these data suggests that a few neurons could together reliably decode thalamic visual input.

Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying pathology can shed light on its mechanisms. Here the authors introduce STARmap PLUS, a method that combines high-resolution spatial transcriptomics with protein detection.

Zhou et al. show that the generation and maintenance of chronic neuropathic pain after peripheral nerve injury is crucially dependent on the activation of a parabrachial nucleus–nucleus basalis-S1 pathway during non-REM sleep.

Pathological α-synuclein (α-Syn) spreading is critical for the progression of many neurodegenerative diseases. The authors demonstrate that soluble α-Syn post-translational modifications (PTMs) dramatically modulate pathological α-synuclein spreading.

This study shows that pyramidal tract (PT) and intratelencephalic (IT) projection neurons process information via distinct parallel subnetworks across cortex, each preferentially associated with either motor events or sensorimotor transformation.

Distinct cortical pyramidal neuron types, defined by developmental lineage, make unique contributions to behavioral decisions. We highlight the importance of interactions among diverse cortical and subcortical areas for successful decision outcomes.

The authors established a method to map RNA localization sequences (zipcodes) and identified the let-7 site and AU repeat as new zipcodes in primary cortical neurons.

The authors show that action value modulates motivation to perform a decision-making task more strongly in females than in males. Anterior cingulate cortex neurons that project to the striatum contribute to this sex difference.

A computational model predicts coordinated drift of neural receptive fields during noisy representation learning and recapitulates experimental observations in the posterior parietal cortex and hippocampal CA1.

Activity in a neural population arises from both its inputs and its recurrent connections. Here the authors show that analyzing the dynamics of trial-to-trial variability in activity can offer insights into delineating these contributions.

van Lengerich et al. developed a human TREM2 antibody with a transport vehicle (ATV) that improves brain exposure and biodistribution in mouse models. ATV:TREM2 promotes microglial energetic capacity and metabolism via mitochondrial pathways.