Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Discovering that nociceptive sensory neurons express the receptor for anthrax toxin, Yang et al. show that anthrax toxin can induce potent analgesia in mice and facilitate the delivery of potentially analgesic cargo proteins into nociceptive neurons.
Using mouse models of TDP-43 neurodegeneration, this study demonstrates that microglial TREM2 binds TDP-43 and thus mediates its phagocytic clearance. TDP-43 may serve as a possible ligand for microglial TREM2 in TDP-43-related neurodegeneration.
Primates seek opportunities to view novel objects even when these objects have no extrinsic reward value. Ogasawara et al. show that this novelty seeking is regulated by a temporal cortex→zona incerta pathway, rather than by dopamine neurons.
By solving the complex structures of third-generation antipsychotic drugs (TGAs) with the 5HT2A receptor, Chen et al. unravel their unique pharmacology and design a novel TGA lead that has cognition-improving and potential antidepressant properties.
What you hear influences what you see. The authors show that experience with an audio-visual stimulus reshapes the input from auditory cortex to visual cortex, suppressing predictable visual input to amplify the unpredictable.
In this study, the authors show that VTA DA neurons display heterogeneous responses during interactions with an unfamiliar conspecific. The activity of DA neurons encodes social prediction error and drives social reinforcement learning.
Despite their discovery in the 19th century, the islands of Calleja, clusters of densely packed granule cells in the ventral striatum, remain enigmatic. This study reveals that islands of Calleja neurons are critical for grooming control in mice.
GnRH neurons control their own connectivity and function as well as the sexual maturation of the individual by using prostaglandin D2 DP1 signaling to recruit and stably associate with newborn astrocytes in the preoptic region during infancy in rodents.
By comparing human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived spinal and ocular motor neurons, the authors identify low levels of a natural 5-lipoxygenase inhibitor in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) spinal motor neurons. Functional analogs of 5-lipoxygenase inhibitors can ameliorate in vitro and in vivo ALS phenotypes.
Zhang et al. show that astrocytes develop responses to fear-conditioned auditory stimuli mediated by α7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) and that astrocytic α7-nAChRs in the auditory cortex are required for memory persistence and retrieval.
The authors show that retinotopically organized feedback from the primary visual cortex sharpens receptive fields and contributes to surround suppression in mouse visual thalamus, probably by recruiting inhibition through the thalamic reticular nucleus.
Beam et al. created a data-driven mapping of human brain function, drawing on full texts and coordinate data reported in neuroimaging studies. This validated framework outperformed leading and widely used knowledge frameworks, namely Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
The authors detail principles underlying the innervation of spinal and striatal circuits by populations of corticospinal neurons, and characterize the behavioral information broadcast through this motor control network.
Magen et al. discovered new miRNA-based biomarkers in the blood of patients with ALS. miR-181 levels alone or in combination with an established protein biomarker predict ALS severity and prognosis and might enhance the power of clinical trials.
This study shows that visual areas pass information to the amodal semantic system through semantically selective channels aligned at the border of visual cortex. This architecture might support the integration of visual perception and semantic memory.
By recording from the Drosophila mushroom body during active odor navigation, Zolin et al. reveal that dopaminergic reinforcement pathways encode rewards and goal-directed actions through similar patterns of neural activity and dopamine release.
By developing a long-term ALS/FTD patient-specific iPSC-derived organoid model that recapitulates mature cortical cell types, the authors pinpoint early selective molecular pathologies at single-cell resolution and a druggable neuronal vulnerability.
A novel study led by scientists in Lübeck, Germany, shows that SARS-CoV-2-infected brain endothelial cells undergo cell death due to the cleavage of NEMO by the viral protease Mpro, potentially causing cerebral COVID-19 and ‘long COVID’ symptoms.
Markovic et al. demonstrate in rodents that anhedonia-like states in inflammatory pain are mediated through increased inhibitory control and subsequent diminished activity of mesolimbic dopamine neurons.
Zhang et al. report that the BLA contains ‘hardwired’ positive-valence and negative-valence neurons, which each express Fezf2 but have distinct connectivity. These neurons separately drive learning and expression of avoidance or approach behavior.