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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.
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.
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.
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.
The authors show how myelination is altered on learning-activated cortical neurons during motor learning in mice. They propose that learning-induced circuit-specific myelin plasticity may contribute to information encoding during learning.
Colombo et al. build a morphological spectrum of over 40,000 microglia across development and disease with a topological data analysis approach that allows mapping of new conditions along these sex-region-specific and brain-region-specific atlases.
Samborska et al. trained mice on a set of problems with the same structure but different physical layouts to study generalization. Neurons in prefrontal cortex generalized across problems, whereas those in hippocampus were more problem specific.
Filipchuk et al. show that when awake mice perceive sounds, the auditory cortex produces sound-specific neuronal assemblies distinct from its ongoing activity, whereas under anesthesia sound-evoked assemblies are indistinguishable from ongoing activity.
Oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) have functions beyond oligodendrogenesis. Here the authors show that OPCs can engulf thalamocortical presynapses in response to sensory experience in mice.
The authors generated the largest epigenome atlas of postmortem brains with Alzheimer’s disease. They reported regulatory genomic signatures associated with AD, including variability in open chromatin regions, transcription factor networks and cis-regulatory domains.
Frontal cortex contains a complex mixture of signals reflecting distinct behavioral and cognitive processes. An analysis of 20,000 neurons during decision-making revealed distinct functional clusters and their activities are driven by the thalamus.
Duffy et al. profiled mRNA translation in 73 human prenatal and adult cortex samples and identified thousands of previously unknown translation events, including small open reading frames that give rise to human-specific and/or brain-specific microproteins.
This genome-wide association study identified 12 novel loci for opioid use disorder, a common, potentially fatal condition. Analyses implicated the CNS, with gene expression enriched in brain regions associated with addiction.
This study shows that, rather than causing inhibition, axonal GABAA receptors often facilitate sodium channel activation and prevent spike propagation failure at branch points of myelinated spinal cord sensory neuron axons.
This study tracked the initial self-assembly, oligomerization and structural conversion of α-synuclein inside neurons. Early seeding events occur on mitochondrial membranes, where oligomerization induces mitochondrial dysfunction and neuronal loss.
Fiber photometry can record brain dynamics, but the biological source of the signal remains unclear. The authors report that fiber photometry in striatum mainly reflects nonsomatic, and not somatic or spiking-related, changes in calcium.
Caldwell et al. provide a resource of astrocyte-secreted proteins from models of neurodevelopmental disorders and use this to identify upregulated levels of the IGF inhibitor Igfbp2 as contributing to neural developmental deficits in Rett syndrome.
To behave flexibly, animals must form new memories and retrieve them later. Li et al. reveal an integrated (molecular-, structural- and circuit-based) system by which the ventral orbitofrontal cortex forms memory for adaptive actions and choice.
Georgiou et al. found that the sex of the person performing experiments affects mouse behavior, including responses to stress and ketamine. This effect was mediated by corticotropin-releasing factor neurons in the entorhinal cortex that project to CA1.
The authors identify neurons in primary somatosensory cortex that do not encode the stimulus, but rather the decision of the mouse, and show that this signal can drive behavior.