News & Comment

Cardiac disease drives the denervation of the pineal gland, resulting in a loss of neural control of melatonin release and disrupted sleep–wake patterns.

During cortical development, direct neurogenesis was found to generate key glutamatergic projection neuron subclasses and indirect neurogenesis generated and amplified specific subpopulations within these subclasses.

A co-released inhibitory neurotransmitter and stimulatory neuropeptide are shown to act on different timescales to enhance circuit output and optimize behaviour.

Findings suggest that the presence of a myelin sheath increases an axon’s vulnerability in autoimmune conditions.

Gut-resident macrophages are shown to have roles in circuit refinement and maintenance in the mouse enteric nervous system.

The increase in blood corticosterone triggered by the release of proinflammatory cytokines is shown to involve vagal regulation of a parabrachial nucleus–paraventricular nucleus pathway.

The binding of psychedelics to the BDNF receptor TrkB boosts plasticity in cultured neurons and underlies the antidepressant-like effects of these compounds in mice.

The number of neural stem cells in the brain decreases with age, which in the dentate gyrus of older mice is associated with a lower SIRT7-mediated mitochondrial unfolded protein response and reduced neural stem cell maintenance and neurogenesis.

A brain–computer interface can decode semantic representations of perceived and imagined stimuli at the level of words and phrases from functional MRI recordings of brain activity.

New findings reveal the importance of synaptic oligomeric tau in Alzheimer disease.

The G-protein-coupled receptor GPR158 acts as a metabotropic glycine receptor in mice.

In Drosophila melanogaster, a neuronal pathway is found that mediates the effect of dietary protein ingestion on arousability from sleep.

Neuronal activity in the secondary motor cortex of mice engaged in a foraging task simultaneously represents multiple alternative decision-making strategies.

Oxytocin-releasing projections from the paraventricular nucleus enhance top-down nociceptive regulation in rats by altering the excitation–inhibition balance in the prefrontal cortex.

Saccades can systematically modulate neural activity in multiple auditory brain regions in humans.

Thalamic activity onto a sparse population of premotor neurons in the zebra finch song nucleus initiates syllable onset, enabling the orchestration of song production.

Infant attachment to the mother in rodents and monkeys is shown to rely on regulation of hypothalamic oxytocin release by a serotonergic projection from the raphe nucleus.

New findings indicate a role for SMN protein in assembly of the synaptic SNARE complex at neuromuscular junctions, providing insight into mechanisms of pathology in spinal muscular atrophy.

The centrosome is crucial for the microtubule dynamics that underlie the radial migration of developing rodent neurons but is not required for axon growth.

A new study examines thalamic innervation of cortical layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons and models how this thalamic connectivity affects visual responses in these cells.