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Top-down control is important for sensory processing. In this study, the authors used virus-assisted circuit mapping to identify the brain networks for top-down modulation of multiple sensory modalities and the subnetworks within the visual network, thus providing an anatomical foundation for understanding the brain mechanisms underlying top-down control of behavior.
The UK Biobank combines detailed phenotyping and genotyping with tracking of long-term health outcomes in a large cohort. This study describes the recently launched brain-imaging component that will ultimately scan 100,000 individuals. Results from the first 5,000 subjects are reported, including thousands of associations, population modes and hypothesis-driven results.
Hintiryan, Foster et al. present an online mouse cortico-striatal projectome describing projections from the entire cortex to dorsal striatum. Computational neuroanatomic analysis of these projections identified 29 distinct striatal domains. This connectomics approach was applied to characterize circuit-specific cortico-striatal connectopathies in a mouse model of Huntington disease and in monoamine oxidase (MAO) A/B knockout mice.
RNA sequences are generally considered to be a mirror of DNA sequences. However, that dogma has become challenged as RNA editing is increasingly recognized. This study explored the global landscape of RNA editing in human brain development and revealed its dynamic aspects, providing insight into epitranscriptional regulation of sequence diversity.
ALS patient iPSC-derived motor neurons aim to model disease phenotypes. The authors demonstrate that these cells transcriptomically resemble fetal rather than adult spinal motor neurons, and familial and sporadic forms of ALS disrupt gene networks and pathways associated with neuronal maturation and aging. These data provide a resource for further understanding how molecular changes in motor neurons lead to disease.
To gain insight into how mutant huntingtin (mHtt) CAG repeat length modifies Huntington's disease pathogenesis, the authors profiled mRNA in over 600 brain and peripheral tissue samples from Huntington's disease knock-in mice with increasing CAG repeat lengths. Coexpression network analyses reveal 13 striatal and 5 cortical modules that are highly correlated with CAG length and age.
Gene-regulatory elements are drivers of evolutionary divergence, yet where these are located and which are evolutionarily relevant is unclear. In this work, large-scale epigenomic analysis of human, rhesus and chimpanzee brain tissue allowed the identification of human-specific gene-regulatory changes that contributed to the emergence of the human brain.
Heterogeneity within distinct cell populations resident in the central nervous system is increasingly recognized as important for functional diversity, plasticity and sensitivity to neurological disease. The authors demonstrate genome-wide diversity of microglia dependent on brain localization in the young adult and show that aging of microglia occurs in a regionally variable manner.
Mammalian cortex comprises a variety of cells, but the extent of this cellular diversity is unknown. The authors defined cell types in the primary visual cortex of adult mice using single-cell transcriptomics. This revealed 49 cell types, including 23 GABAergic, 19 glutamatergic and 7 non-neuronal types.
