Volume 26 Issue 8, August 2023

As Nature Neuroscience celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are having conversations with both established leaders in the field and those earlier in their careers to discuss how neuroscience has evolved, and where it is heading. This month, we are talking to Andrew Huberman, Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University and host of the very popular Huberman Lab podcast. We spoke about his path into science communication, his work on the podcast, and how he handles his newfound fame.

As Nature Neuroscience celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are having conversations with both established leaders in the field and those earlier in their careers to discuss how neuroscience has evolved and where it is heading. This month, we are talking to Mario Penzo, Chief of the Section on the Neural Circuits of Emotion and Motivation at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). We spoke about his early life in the Dominican Republic and his work on neural circuits underlying behavior.

Monteiro and colleagues used temperature manipulation to bidirectionally alter the speed of neuronal dynamics in the dorsal striatum of anesthetized rats. This manipulation selectively slowed down or sped up time perception, providing insights into the mechanisms of time-based decisions.

We found reduced N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A) RNA modification in neurons differentiated from induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or frontotemporal dementia caused by C9orf72 repeat expansion. This reduction disturbs global gene expression and exacerbates neurodegeneration. Strategies to restore the m⁶A level hold great promise as therapeutic approaches.

Communication between diverse cell types is crucial to the development of the nervous system. However, the secreted signals that help to switch the cell fates of progenitor cells from neurogenesis to astrogenesis are not fully understood. Experiments in human tissues show that five ligands work together to push astrocyte generation and maturation.

The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) unites researchers aiming to understand autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease (ADAD). By longitudinally monitoring families worldwide, the DIAN Observational Study maintains an unprecedented resource of deeply phenotyped, freely available neuroimaging data on individuals with ADAD and their healthy relatives.

Global reduction of m⁶A leads to mRNA stabilization in ALS/FTD caused by C9ORF72 repeat expansion. m⁶A also regulates repeat RNA decay. Elevating m⁶A reduces RNA and dipeptide repeats, restores mRNA homeostasis and improves patient neuron survival.

The factors that regulate astrogenesis during development are not completely understood. Here the authors propose a data-driven framework to leverage transcriptomic data to identify ligand–receptor pairs promoting astrogenesis and validate their effects in human cortical organoids and fetal progenitor cells.

The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying major depressive disorder are unclear. Here, the authors report cell type- and cortical layer-specific gene expression changes and identify one microglia subpopulation associated with depressive-like behavior in female non-human primates.

Dridi et al. identified a mechanism for cognitive dysfunction after heart failure in which hyper-adrenergic signaling and transforming growth factor-beta activation induced Ca²⁺ leak by RyR2 channels in hippocampal neurons.

Chandelier cells organize neural coding and mediate learning by establishing inhibitory circuit motifs over individual pyramidal neurons and suppressing irrelevant activity via adaptive axo-axonic synaptic plasticity, subserving efficient computation.

Complex spikes (CSs) driven by inferior olivary neurons have crucial roles in motor control. Wang et al. identified an excitatory pathway from the cerebellar nuclei to the inferior olive that drives rapid feedback CSs and contributes to the fine control of ocular and body movements.

Changing temperature in striatum warped neural activity in time and categorical time judgments in rats. Similar effects on movement were not observed. Striatal dynamics may thus support discrete decisions and not continuous motor control.

To understand how antipsychotics modulate neural activity in the striatum, Yun et al. used in vivo imaging and found a correlation between clinical efficacy and the modulation of D1R-expressing, rather than D2R-expressing, striatal neurons in mice.

Using direct recordings from human MTL neurons during sleep, Staresina et al. reveal that neuronal firing and communication—thought to underlie synaptic plasticity and learning—are controlled by coupled slow oscillations, spindles and ripples.

The authors derive a neural network theory of systems consolidation to assess why some memories consolidate more than others. They propose that brains regulate consolidation to optimize generalization, so only predictable memory components consolidate.

The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network neuroimaging repository is a free resource consisting of PET and MRI scans from 533 individuals across 206 families who are deeply phenotyped with genetic, clinical, cognitive and biofluid sampling.

Sebenius et al. present Morphometric INverse Divergence (MIND), a robust MRI-based metric of similarity between brain areas that reflects biological factors that define cortical network architecture, such as gene expression and axonal connectivity.