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The use of field-standard approaches in neuroscience and psychology can exclude participants from research, biasing our understanding of brain–behavior relations. Ricard, Parker, and colleagues discuss how we might address inequity in our scientific methodology. The cover image is a stylized illustration depicting exclusion in human neuroimaging methods. Cover concept: Mona Li, Jocelyn Ricard. Printed with permission from Mona Li Visuals.
Despite rich behavioral evidence, it is unclear how the brain expands its behavior repertoire. By building theoretical models with a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, I show that the brain composes a behavior to solve a novel task by combining previously acquired skills and augmenting their variability.
The use of field-standard approaches in neuroscience and psychology can exclude participants from research, biasing our understanding of brain–behavior relations. Here the authors discuss how we might address inequity in our scientific methodology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Humphrey et al. analyzed genetic and gene expression data from the postmortem spinal cords of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), observing changes in cell type composition and highlighting new risk genes.
Brain images from the Chinese Human Connectome Project (CHCP) are now publicly available to facilitate transcultural and cross-ethnic brain–mind studies. Comparisons found reproducible brain parcellations but most differences were in language processing.