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Riveland and Pouget model instructed action, showing that shared structure in task and semantic representations allows language to compose practiced skills in novel settings. Models make predictions for neural activity in human language areas.
Chen et al. show that transitions to innate behaviors, such as feeding and social interaction, rely on their encoding during beta oscillations by neuron populations in the lateral hypothalamus, coordinated with the medial prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area.
Cortical excitatory neurons are narrowly tuned to sensory inputs, but the tuning of interneurons is perceived as broad and irregular. Duszkiewicz et al. demonstrate that interneuron tuning is structured and reflects the sum of local excitatory inputs.
This paper identifies the evolutionarily conserved liprin-α protein family as key mediators of presynaptic assembly in human neurons. Their recruitment to sites formed by contacting neurons is the critical initial step that triggers presynaptic differentiation.
The identity of receptors sensing cold temperatures in peripheral somatosensory neurons remains obscure. Cai et al. report that GluK2, a kainate receptor mediating synaptic transmission in the brain, is co-opted as a cold sensor in the periphery.
A real-time analysis system was developed for an up to 500-megabyte-per-second image stream. This system can extract activities from up to 100,000 neurons in larval zebrafish brains and enables closed-loop perturbations of brain-wide neural dynamics at cellular resolution.
This study investigates self-paced actions in freely foraging macaques. Findings highlight continuously evolving neural components that capture beliefs about latent reward dynamics, which are crucial for informed decision-making in a natural setting.
C9orf72 ALS/FTD polyGR and polyPR knock-in mice show cortical hyperexcitability and motor neuron loss accompanied by an increase in extracellular matrix proteins in the spinal cord that is conserved in patient iPS cell-derived neurons and is neuroprotective.
Sias et al. show that dopamine projections to the basolateral amygdala drive the reward learning that supports the predictions and inferences needed for adaptive decision-making.
Hollunder et al. identify networks where deep brain stimulation reduces symptoms for Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, dystonia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This revealed a fronto-rostral topography that segregates the frontal cortex.
Long COVID is a major public health issue since 2020 and exhibits frequent neurological symptoms. Greene et al. propose that brain fog results from leaky brain blood vessels and a hyperactive immune system, shedding light on this phenomenon.
Astrocytes have important roles in disease. However, modulation of their reactive state is challenging. Here the authors present a phenotypic in vitro screening platform they can leverage to identify chemical compounds able to modulate astrocyte reactivity in vitro and in vivo.
Using single-neuron recordings in patients with epilepsy, Kunz et al. show that stimulus-specific neurons activate together during hippocampal ripples when humans encode and retrieve associative memories.
Radke et al. found an interferon response in the brainstem nuclei of acute COVID-19 that, in addition to the inflammatory reaction, spreads throughout the vascular unit altering glial cells and resolves in late disease states in the absence of brain infection.
Haynes et al. report a daily, sleep-dependent neuron–glia lipid metabolic cycle. ApoE-dependent lipid transfer from neurons to glia protects neurons from oxidative damage during waking, and lipids are cleared from glia during sleep.
Despite a long history of studying perceptual biases in neuroscience, many of the biases remain difficult to explain and even appear to be contradictory. The authors propose a unifying theory that sheds new light on such puzzling perceptual biases.
Wang et al. identify a molecularly defined tetra-synaptic pathway for olfaction-evoked innate fear and anxiety in mice. These findings reveal a forebrain-to-hindbrain neural substrate for sensory-triggered fear and anxiety that bypasses the amygdala.
Minakuchi et al. find that separable inhibitory inputs to a critical hypothalamic aggression-control node can influence the evolution of an aggressive state by independently modulating either the motivational phase or the action phase.
The basal ganglia control the execution of motor actions. However, how they engage spinal motor networks is unclear. Here the authors show that the basal ganglia–spinal cord pathway controls locomotor asymmetries in adult mice.
Using in vivo calcium imaging and cell-type-specific pharmacology, we reveal that synaptic inhibition in the cerebellar granule cell layer supports pattern separation and cerebellum-dependent behavior.