Volume 25 Issue 11, November 2022

In the case that led the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade, the State of Mississippi made the strong claim that fetuses can feel pain. We argue that critical biological evidence used to support this claim was misinterpreted and that the State’s argument conflated pain and nociception. Abortion policy has profound moral and ethical consequences and therefore needs to be grounded in the most accurate scientific arguments, as well as a clear understanding of what we mean when we use the term pain.

By integrating ongoing bioethical collaboration, neuroscientists can create a positive effect on their research and the knowledge it produces. To this end, we offer our experiences with an interdisciplinary model for the ethical advancement of a promising area of neuroscience — human neural organoid research.

How genetic and environmental risk factors interact to trigger the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains largely unknown. Seah et al. model stress hypersensitivity as a potential mechanism by examining transcriptomic responses to glucocorticoids in neurons derived from individuals with PTSD.

Scheggia et al.¹ have established a behavioral paradigm to explore preferences for ‘altruistic’ or ‘selfish’ choice behavior in mice. The results suggest that altruistic behavior develops through reinforcement learning driven by social rewards, which is controlled by interactions between the basolateral amygdala and prelimbic cortex.

Psychedelics are serotonergic drugs that have therapeutic potential. This Review article provides an integrative perspective on the basic neurobiology underlying the actions of psychedelics and highlights open questions in the field.

Oh et al. modeled age-dependent onset of Huntington’s disease by comparing reprogrammed neurons from pre-symptomatic and symptomatic patients. They found that an age-associated miRNA led to autophagy impairment and neurodegeneration.

The authors generated stem cell-derived neurons from combat veterans with and without PTSD and found PTSD-dependent gene expression changes in response to glucocorticoids. This highlights how stress response may be altered in individuals with PTSD.

Aging is associated with the formation of focal white matter lesions and atrophy. The authors discovered a role for CD8⁺ T cells in driving white matter-specific interferon responses in microglia and oligodendrocytes, leading to oligodendrocyte loss.

Using new phagocytosis reporter mice and 3D ultrastructural characterization, Morizawa et al. show that motor learning induces synaptic engulfment by BG, which contributes to synaptic pruning during the improvement of motor adaptation.

Furlan et al. report that neurotensin-expressing neurons in the IPAC encode preference for unhealthy energy-dense foods and drive hedonic eating. Thus, inhibition of these neurons reduces hedonic eating, improves metabolic health and prevents obesity.

McHugh et al. combine triple-(DG-CA3-CA1) ensemble recordings and optogenetic manipulations in the mouse hippocampus to show that adult-born granule cells transiently support sparser population activity for effective mnemonic information processing.

Muscle fibers have diverse properties—for example, slow and fast twitch. Groups of fibers are activated by motoneurons. Marshall et al. found that motoneurons are used flexibly, presumably allowing us to intelligently employ fibers suited to each task.

Scheggia and colleagues present a social decision-making assay in which mice display altruistic or selfish choices. The authors show that projections between the prefrontal cortex and the basolateral amygdala are involved in the control of the two different choices.

Guo et al. use two-sample Mendelian randomization analyses to reveal causal relationships between neuroimaging phenotypes and psychiatric disorders. This insight may be helpful in predicting psychiatric disorder risk at the neuroimaging level.

Leng et al. establish CRISPRi screens in astrocytes to dissect pathways controlling inflammatory reactivity. They uncover two distinct inflammatory reactive signatures that are inversely regulated by STAT3 and validate that these exist in human disease.

Somatosensory neurons detect pain, temperature and touch. Keeler et al. constructed a single-cell, protein-level atlas of nearly 3 million cells from the mouse dorsal root ganglia, covering 13 days of embryonic and postnatal development.

In this work, the authors transcriptionally and genetically profile 443 caudate nucleus samples, including 154 with schizophrenia, highlighting new genes associated with schizophrenia risk, including the presynaptic DRD2 isoform.

Hansen et al. compile and share an atlas of neurotransmitter receptor/transporter densities in the human cortex and show that receptor achitecture reflects brain structure, function, dynamics, cognitive specialization and disease vulnerability.