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In bat CA1, the authors found contextual time cells encoding spatial context and time, another population purely encoding elapsed time and social time cells encoding sequences aligned to another bat’s landing in a social imitation task.
Most spatial navigation studies assume a linear map of space. This study reports that neural representations of space follow non-linear hyperbolic coordinates. These representations also expand with experience along a maximally informative limit.
Lee et al. show that the long-term storage of remote contextual memories involves progressive and synapse-specific strengthening of excitatory connections between memory engram neurons in the prefrontal cortex.
Animals form cognitive maps of the world to guide behavior. This study shows that the lateral orbitofrontal cortex is essential for creating precise, outcome-specific cognitive maps during initial learning, but not for general map creation in itself.
Using mice and artificial deep reinforcement learning agents trained in the same task, it is discovered that composition of a novel behavior entails a simple arithmetic operation on action values of constituent subtasks and their stochastic policies.
Hádinger et al. found selective innervation of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) by frontal cortex L5 cells. The spike output of TRN provides a precise readout of the cortical population activity in thalamic regions connected to frontal cortex.
Tremblay, Testard et al. show that, in monkeys, spontaneous movements do not occlude neural coding of cognitive variables. However, movements predict upcoming decisions and partly explain neural activity, potentially confounding brain recording experiments.
Craving—the urge to use a drug or to eat—is a core feature of substance use disorders. Koban et al. present an fMRI-based and machine-learning-based neuromarker that predicts the intensity of drug and food craving and separates drug users from non-users.
Iron-laden microglia assume a disease-relevant, ferroptosis-associated signature and cause neurotoxicity. CRISPR screen uncovered regulators of ferroptosis in microglia. This ferroptosis–microglia–neurodegeneration axis could be targeted therapeutically.
What are the representations that enable diverse human cognition? The authors investigate cortical representations across 26 tasks and the conditions by which artificial neural network models reproduce these representations.
This article shows that reduced inhibitory tone in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex of obese mice impairs their ability to use the value of an outcome to guide behavior. This could explain why access to obesogenic food biases behavior toward eating beyond satiety.
Combining brain imaging, genetics and behavioral data, this study shows that distinct brainwide distributions of serotonin receptors explain the known division of serotonin effects on human impulsivity and aversive processing.
Leveraging RNA-targeting CRISPR–Cas13d technology, Morelli et al. engineered a novel therapeutic strategy that safely and effectively eliminates toxic expanded huntingtin RNA in multiple models of Huntington’s disease.
Alfonsa et al. show that wakefulness causes shifts in cortical EGABAA, weakening synaptic inhibition and resulting in markers of local sleep pressure, and identify Cl− regulation as a link between sleep–wake history, cortical activity and behavior.
Early-life trauma is a risk factor for binge eating and obesity later in life. Shin et al. identify a hypothalamus–brainstem circuit in mice that underlies the early-life trauma-induced binge-like consumption of high-fat diet and obesity-prone characteristics.
Model-based analysis of learning and neural activity in mice trained to find reward in both a spatial, navigational context and a relational, non-navigational context revealed dissociable contributions of hippocampus depending upon spatial context.
Yu et al. show that at least two distinct serotonergic DRN-to-BA pathways are involved in different aspects of anxiety-related behaviors via different molecular mechanisms.
Karpf et al. showed that distinct layers of the adult human and mouse DG are populated by astrocytes, which exhibit a subtype-specific molecular profile and morphology, leading to subtype-specific physiological characteristics.
Using dual-color mesoscopic imaging in the neocortex of awake mice, the authors show that cholinergic release and neuronal activity exhibit distinct spatiotemporal patterns that are differentially linked to spontaneous fluctuations in behavioral state.
Cichon et al. show that ketamine induces a switch in the active population of excitatory neurons across cortical layers and regions that contributes to impairments in sensory processing characteristic of a dissociative-like state.