Volume 26 Issue 11, November 2023

We used single-nucleus sequencing to generate an atlas of gene expression and chromatin accessibility in the amygdala of outbred rats with divergent cocaine addiction-like behaviors. The results implicated dysregulation of metabolic pathways and GABAergic transmission as molecular bases of susceptibility or resistance to addiction.

Sleep is typically considered as a state of behavioral disconnection from the outside world. Recordings of brain activity and facial muscle tone during sleep reveal that humans can respond to external stimuli across most sleep stages. These windows of behavioral responsiveness reveal transient episodes of high-cognitive states with electrophysiological signatures suggestive of a conscious state.

Despite diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, women remain underrepresented as academic leaders in neuroscience. In this Perspective, Bourke, Spanò and Schuman discuss current European initiatives and propose further actions to support women’s career progression in STEM.

Recent progress in astrocyte biology requires a more cohesive conceptual framework. This Perspective introduces a ‘contextual guidance’ paradigm in which astrocytes are key to adaptive modeling of neural circuits in response to state changes.

This Review explains how the neural coding of uncertainty is theoretically conceived and empirically tested. It compares the approaches of two largely separate research communities and proposes goals for the field that combine these approaches.

Using single-cell genomics, addiction-like behaviors in outbred rats are associated with persistent cell-type-specific molecular signatures in the amygdala, implicating a pivotal role of energy metabolism in cocaine addiction.

Spatial transcriptomics reveals distinct composition and organization of cells and circuits in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC) relative to adjacent cortices, which concur with PFC’s diverse functions, and also help detect neurons involved in chronic pain.

A single cell type in the Drosophila visual system implements motion-opponent inhibition at multiple consecutive circuit levels. This neural architecture enables high stimulus selectivity without compromising sensitivity under noisy conditions.

The authors derive a local plasticity model that shapes neuronal representations to predict future sensory inputs. The same model accounts for fundamental neural plasticity phenomena and creates object invariance in deep neural networks.

The neocortex and cerebellum interact during cognitive functions. The authors assembled an activity map of the cerebellum in relation to its connectome with frontal cortex, which uncovered how the two areas form networks to orchestrate motor planning.

Chen et al. find that cerebellar Purkinje cells directly inhibit neurons in parabrachial nuclei that in turn influence many forebrain regions. This alternative output pathway could enable the cerebellum to regulate emotions, anxiety, aggression and affect.

This study examined the role of rat frontal and parietal cortices in choosing whether to gamble versus play it safe. A combination of perturbations, electrophysiology and quantitative modeling establishes that the frontal cortex is important for representing the expected utility of options in the service of economic choice.

In primates, activity in the visual cortex is not driven by spontaneous body movements. These results confirm the functional specialization of primate visual processing, in contrast with findings in mice, and highlight the importance of cross-species comparisons.

Neural networks must balance associative plasticity with rapid compensatory processes to maintain stable activity patterns. Andrei et al. provide in vivo evidence of a rapid homeostatic process that decreases network connectivity when excitatory neurons are synchronously activated.

Wang et al. examine how populations of neurons encode decision certainty by characterizing the energy landscape underlying population neuronal dynamics during choice. They find that energy landscapes are steeper when more confident decisions are made.

We typically assume that we lose the ability to react to the outside world when sleeping. Oudiette et al. show that, in most sleep stages, humans can use their facial muscles to respond to spoken words during transient ‘connected’ periods.

Electrical deep brain stimulation therapy is limited by the risks of inserting electrodes into the brain. Here the authors report non-invasive deep brain stimulation in the human hippocampus using temporal interference of kHz electric fields.

The Hummel lab demonstrated that the striatum can be successfully and focally reached noninvasively via transcranial electrical temporal interference stimulation in humans, which resulted in improvements of motor learning in older adults.

The authors test artificial neural networks with stimuli whose activations are matched to those of a natural stimulus. These ‘model metamers’ are often unrecognizable to humans, demonstrating a discrepancy between human and model sensory systems.