Research articles

Koh, Ma et al. show that during climbing, mouse motor cortex instructs limb muscle activity patterns primarily by selectively activating certain muscles at certain activity states, via neural activity patterns distinct from those previously described.

Microglia influence amyloid-β effects on astrocyte reactivity in the living brain of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. This phenomenon further contributes to cognitive impairment via tau phosphorylation and aggregation.

Dominant coactivation patterns are primarily studied in resting-state fMRI. Here, the authors study the rest of the signal, which reveals ‘caricatured’ connectomes with improved behavioral prediction.

The authors develop a neural probe with over 1,000 light emitters arranged along its length and circumference, enabling panoramic 3D optical stimulation across large brain volumes.

The authors mapped the dendritic morphology of thousands of striatal D1-type and D2-type medium spiny neurons in healthy and Huntington’s disease mouse brains, revealing dendritic modules with distinct neuronal shapes, spatial distributions and cortical inputs.

Cortical neurons comprising an output pathway form a specialized population code that enhances the propagation of information to a downstream target, potentially improving the accuracy of decision-making.

TDP-43 dysfunction in ALS/FTD causes faulty splicing of the KCNQ2 ion channel, leading to toxic protein buildup, neuron hyperactivity and a potential new biomarker and treatment target using RNA-based therapies.

Yang et al. show that moments of failed attention we experience after sleep deprivation reflect brief ‘sleep-like’ episodes in the brain, corresponding to a brain- and body-wide event with altered brain activity, pupil size and brain fluid movement.

Li et al. propose a conceptual framework to study the phenomenon of falling asleep based on electroencephalogram data. They show that a tipping point marks the brain’s nonlinear wake-to-sleep transition and that the unfolding process can be tracked in real time.

The authors show that connectome datasets alone are generally not sufficient to predict neural activity. However, pairing connectivity information with neural recordings can produce accurate predictions of activity in unrecorded neurons.

Working memory improves during adolescent brain development. Zhu et al. tracked monkeys through adolescence, revealing that maturation of white matter tracts and refinement of neural firing patterns sharpen working memory precision.

This study maps chromatin accessibility in neurons and glia in schizophrenia, revealing fetal-like regulatory patterns in adult neurons enriched for genetic risk variants, linking early brain development to schizophrenia pathogenesis

The brain is constantly monitoring the systems in the body. Here the authors use 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging to map a large-scale brain system for body regulation in humans, including brainstem nuclei, and confirm many monosynaptic connections traced in nonhuman animals.

Sheehan et al. have characterized the circadian translatomes of astrocytes and microglia in the mouse cortex in the context of amyloid pathology or aging, revealing cell- and disease-specific reprogramming of neurodegeneration-related pathways.

The authors find that TDP-43 loss of function—the pathology defining the neurodegenerative conditions ALS and FTD—induces novel mRNA polyadenylation events, which have different effects, including an increase in RNA stability, leading to higher protein levels.

Zeng et al. show that TDP-43, known for repressing cryptic exon usage in frontotemporal dementia/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also controls alternative polyadenylation, impacting expression of disease-linked genes (SFPQ, NEFL and TMEM106B).

Figge-Schlensok et al. show that leptin-sensitive neurons in the lateral hypothalamus encode anxiogenic stimuli and facilitate adaptive strategies to enable an animal to overcome anxiety in threatening situations.

Buron et al. show that oxytocin enhances heart rate variability linked to breathing during recovery from stress. This calming and cardio-protective effect is produced through a hypothalamus–brainstem pathway for parasympathetic control of the heart.

The authors show that deep brain stimulation (DBS) inhibits local neural activity via differential suppression of glutamate and GABA release, and they developed a chemogenetic therapy as a less invasive, cost-effective alternative to electrical DBS.

Brain clearance mechanisms are challenging to visualize in humans. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the authors noninvasively mapped cerebrospinal fluid motion across the brain, showing region-specific drivers in healthy participants and altered dynamics in cerebral amyloid angiopathy.