Featured
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News |
How emotional memories are engraved on the brain, with surprising helper cells
Astrocytes have a more active role in stabilizing memories than once thought.
- Katie Kavanagh
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Article
| Open AccessThe astrocytic ensemble acts as a multiday trace to stabilize memory
Emotional experience evokes signalling in astrocytes, which form an ensemble that is reinforced by secondary astrocytic state changes resulting from repeated experience, leading to memory stabilization.
- Ken-ichi Dewa
- , Kodai Kaseda
- & Jun Nagai
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News & Views |
Birds’ intruder alert hints at how sounds took on new meanings
Diverse bird species recognize the same vocalization to rally neighbours against invading cuckoos. The finding plays into a broader debate about the emergence of language.
- Holly Smith
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Article
| Open AccessA parabrachial hub for need-state control of enduring pain
Activity in a set of parabranchial neurons in the mouse brain is increased during chronic pain, predicts coping behaviour, and can be modulated by circuits activated by survival threats.
- Nitsan Goldstein
- , Amadeus Maes
- & J. Nicholas Betley
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News |
Brain area linked to chronic pain discovered — offering hope for treatments
The newfound ensemble of neurons could lead to therapies to treat persistent pain, which affects roughly one in five people globally.
- Lynne Peeples
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Article
| Open AccessFlexible perceptual encoding by discrete gamma events
Using a new analytical method for tracking gamma band events in mouse visual cortex, flexible encoding of visual information according to behavioural context is shown.
- Quentin Perrenoud
- , Antonio H. de O. Fonseca
- & Jessica A. Cardin
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Editorial |
Weaponizing uncertainty in science and in public health puts people in harm’s way
Those who cite scientific studies to support policies should take care to tell the whole story, especially when it’s complex.
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News |
Creative hobbies could slow brain ageing at the molecular level
To keep the mind young, dance the tango.
- Gemma Conroy
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Career Feature |
Memorable, distinctive, not too ‘sciencey’: why we named our biotech firm Anocca
Chief executive Reagan Jarvis describes the role a branding agency had in naming his technology company.
- Jacqui Thornton
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News |
Features of autism can affect age of diagnosis — and so can genes
The age at which a person is diagnosed with autism can be partly explained by genetic factors.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
See space fireworks and lightning spaghetti — September’s best science images
The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
- Fred Schwaller
- & Katie Kavanagh
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News |
US autism research gets $50-million funding boost — amid row over Tylenol
An injection of funding into genetic and environmental factors underlying autism was eclipsed by Trump’s controversial claims about acetaminophen.
- Helen Pearson
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News |
Swapping old immune cells in the brain with fresh ones could treat disease
Replacing immune cells called microglia holds promise for addressing brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
- Heidi Ledford
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Research Briefing |
Arousal reframed as an organism‑wide dynamic system
The temporal evolution of a hidden, low-dimensional and organism-wide process, inferred from measuring the pupil of an eye, has been shown to account for complex spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity over timescales of seconds. This points to an underlying dynamic that continuously structures the unfolding of brain, body and behavioural variables.
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Article
| Open AccessArousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics
Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.
- Ryan V. Raut
- , Zachary P. Rosenthal
- & J. Nathan Kutz
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Career Feature |
Nerdy and easy to pronounce: why we chose Apheros as the name for our technology start-up firm
With a grant deadline looming, and inspired by the classics, Julia Carpenter, the company’s chief executive and co-founder, put pen to paper to capture ideas.
- Jacqui Thornton
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Innovations In |
New Hope in Alzheimer’s Research
Breakthrough therapies, new diagnostics and preventive measures for fighting a devastating disease.
- Lauren Gravitz
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Innovations In |
Controversial New Alzheimer’s Drugs Offer Hope—But at a High Cost
New Alzheimer’s drugs known as anti-amyloid therapies may slow disease progression—but they also carry serious risks, including brain bleeds and strokelike symptoms.
- Liz Seegert
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Innovations In |
Can Diet and Exercise Really Prevent Alzheimer’s?
Early studies suggest that lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise and social engagement may help slow or prevent Alzheimer’s symptoms—but the evidence is inconsistent, and many doctors remain cautious.
- Sara Harrison
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Innovations In |
The Vexing Promise of New Blood Tests for Alzheimer’s
A new generation of Alzheimer’s blood tests could speed up diagnosis and access to care—but they also raise thorny questions about prediction, treatment and uncertainty.
- Cassandra Willyard
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Innovations In |
The Hidden Link between Racism and Alzheimer’s Risk
Black Americans face a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias than white Americans. Researchers are working to find out why that is and how to intervene.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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Innovations In |
Alzheimer’s Drugs Are Finally Tackling the Disease Itself. Here’s How
While our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease is far from complete, the latest therapies, and others in more than 100 clinical trials, offer new hope.
- Esther Landhuis
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Innovations In |
Can We Fix America’s Dementia Care Crisis before It’s Too Late?
More than 13.8 million Americans could have Alzheimer’s by 2060, and at the rate care facilities are closing, many of them will have nowhere to go. Regina Shih of the State Alzheimer’s Research Support Center (StARS) wants to help solve that problem.
- Tara Haelle
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Article
| Open AccessTransitions in dynamical regime and neural mode during perceptual decisions
Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neural mode.
- Thomas Zhihao Luo
- , Timothy Doyeon Kim
- & Carlos D. Brody
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News & Views |
Wired for growth: neuron–tumour signalling in the lung and brain increases growth of a hard-to-treat cancer
Signalling between neurons and tumour cells in the lung and brain promotes the growth of small-cell lung cancer. These interactions might be a therapeutic target.
- Abbie S. Ireland
- & Trudy G. Oliver
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News Feature |
AI is helping to decode animals’ speech. Will it also let us talk with them?
The complexity of vocal communication in some primates, whales and birds might approach that of human language.
- Rachel Fieldhouse
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Article
| Open AccessA neuronal architecture underlying autonomic dysreflexia
The neuronal architecture that develops after spinal cord injury and causes autonomic dysreflexia is uncovered.
- Jan Elaine Soriano
- , Remi Hudelle
- & Gregoire Courtine
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Article |
CRISPR activation for SCN2A-related neurodevelopmental disorders
Using SCN2A haploinsufficiency as a proof-of-concept, upregulation of the existing functional gene copy through CRISPR activation was able to rescue neurological-associated phenotypes in Scn2a haploinsufficient mice and human neurons.
- Serena Tamura
- , Andrew D. Nelson
- & Kevin J. Bender
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Article
| Open AccessRepeated head trauma causes neuron loss and inflammation in young athletes
Repetitive head impacts from contact sports are associated with brain inflammation, vascular damage and neuron loss that are independent of hyperphosphorylated tau pathology.
- Morgane L. M. D. Butler
- , Nida Pervaiz
- & Jonathan D. Cherry
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Article |
Selective presynaptic inhibition of leg proprioception in behaving Drosophila
A study in Drosophila has identified a neural circuit that selectively suppress movement-encoding proprioceptors during self-generated movements such as walking and grooming.
- Chris J. Dallmann
- , Yichen Luo
- & John C. Tuthill
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Article
| Open AccessDelta-type glutamate receptors are ligand-gated ion channels
Structural and in vitro functional studies of the human delta-type ionotropic glutamate receptor GluD2 reveal that it contains an ion channel that is activated by d-serine and GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid).
- Haobo Wang
- , Fairine Ahmed
- & Edward C. Twomey
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Nature Video |
Is my red your red? Neuroscience has an answer
The age-old philosophical question of whether we see
colours the same way has been explored with brain scans.
- Katie Kavanagh
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
‘Brain dial’ turns food consumption on or off in mice
Master-control area integrates information about hunger, a food’s tastiness and more — and can even drive intake of plastic pellets.
- Amanda Heidt
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Article
| Open AccessABCA7 variants impact phosphatidylcholine and mitochondria in neurons
Loss-of-function variants of ABCA7, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, result in disrupted lipid metabolism, mitochondrial function, DNA repair and synaptic signalling pathways in the human brain.
- Djuna von Maydell
- , Shannon E. Wright
- & Li-Huei Tsai
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Article
| Open AccessNeuronal activity-dependent mechanisms of small cell lung cancer pathogenesis
Glutamatergic and GABAergic (γ-aminobutyric acid-producing) cortical neuronal activity drives proliferation of small lung cell cancer via paracrine interactions and through synapses formed with tumour cells.
- Solomiia Savchuk
- , Kaylee M. Gentry
- & Humsa S. Venkatesh
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Article
| Open AccessFunctional synapses between neurons and small cell lung cancer
Small cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with glutamatergic neurons, receiving synaptic transmissions and deriving a proliferative advantage from these interactions.
- Vignesh Sakthivelu
- , Anna Schmitt
- & Filippo Beleggia
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News |
My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same way
A machine-learning tool can predict what colour a person is looking at when trained on the brain activity of others.
- Katie Kavanagh
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Article
| Open AccessBrain-wide representations of prior information in mouse decision-making
Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.
- Charles Findling
- , Félix Hubert
- & Alexandre Pouget
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Article
| Open AccessA brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour
The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.
- Leenoy Meshulam
- , Dora Angelaki
- & Ilana B. Witten
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Article
| Open AccessDynamic fibroblast–immune interactions shape recovery after brain injury
Spatial transcriptomic studies and lineage tracing reveal that, after brain injury, transient profibrotic fibroblasts develop from existing brain fibroblasts, infiltrate lesions, regulate the local immune response and lead to beneficial scar tissue formation.
- Nathan A. Ewing-Crystal
- , Nicholas M. Mroz
- & Ari B. Molofsky
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Research Briefing |
Cocaine-activated ion channels engineered to break the loop of addiction in rats
Ion channels have been created that are selectively activated by cocaine and that act to either stimulate or inhibit the electrical activity of neuronal cells in the brain. These cocaine-activated ion channels are used to engineer neural circuits in rats to respond to cocaine in a manner that reduces cocaine seeking but not food seeking.
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Research Briefing |
How the brain’s amygdala reacts when making decisions to avoid losses
Humans explore unfamiliar options more when deciding how to avoid losses than when seeking gains. The firing rate of neuronal cells in the brain’s amygdala predicts decisions to explore in both learning strategies, but neuronal ‘noise’ predicts exploration decisions only when avoiding losses. Together, these signals explain the increased exploration when risking losses.
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Article
| Open AccessA circuit that integrates drive state and social contact to gate mating
Analyses of consummatory reproductive behaviours in male mice uncover a brain mechanism whereby an internal state can attribute a social quality to a generic touch to initiate purposeful reproductive actions.
- Lindsey D. Salay
- , Doris Y. Tsao
- & David J. Anderson
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Article
| Open AccessPICALM Alzheimer’s risk allele causes aberrant lipid droplets in microglia
A PICALM allele associated with increased risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease has a microglial-specific role in lipid droplet accumulation.
- Alena Kozlova
- , Siwei Zhang
- & Jubao Duan
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Article
| Open AccessSingle-cell transcriptomic and genomic changes in the ageing human brain
Sequencing analyses of human prefrontal cortex from donors ranging in age from 0.4 to 104 years show that ageing correlates with an accumulation of somatic mutations in short housekeeping genes and a reduction in the expression of these genes.
- Ailsa M. Jeffries
- , Tianxiong Yu
- & Michael A. Lodato
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News |
AI-powered brain device allows paralysed man to control robotic arm
The human user and AI have shared autonomy and constantly interact to complete tasks.
- Rachel Fieldhouse
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Outlook |
Explaining the mental-health burden of atopic dermatitis
People with the inflammatory skin disease are at greater risk of neuropsychiatric conditions. Researchers are trying to find out why.
- Amanda Keener
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Research Briefing |
How tree shrews see the world
In primates, visual information is processed hierarchically, moving from early brain regions that respond to low-level features to later-stage areas that recognize complex features and objects. In the tree shrew, a non-primate mammal, this hierarchy is evolutionarily conserved but is compressed, using the equivalent of an early primate brain area to recognize objects.
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Article |
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning
Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.
- Tamar Reitich-Stolero
- , Kristoffer C. Aberg
- & Rony Paz
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