Volume 27 Issue 1, January 2024

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 the field has evolved and where it is heading. This month we are talking to Kelsey Martin, Executive Vice President of Autism and Neuroscience at the Simons Foundation and Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she previously served as the Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine. We discussed the pleasures of studying neuronal cell biology and her leadership roles.

Neuroscientists have long believed that hunger increases activity in agouti-related peptide (AgRP) neurons to regulate feeding-related behaviors and metabolism, but a new study shows that the story is much more complicated. Sayar-Atasoy and colleagues show that the time of day uncouples activity in AgRP neurons from hunger and demonstrate how daily feeding patterns influence future AgRP neuron activity.

We show that genetic disruption of TFEB- and vacuolar ATPase-mediated lysosomal signaling leads to increased tau pathology and defective microglia activation. Our findings demonstrate an essential role of the lysosome in regulating microglia activity in tauopathy and Alzheimer’s disease.

Fang and Creed review and synthesize recent studies of the striatum and pallidal complex. Based on connectivity and organization of striatal–pallidal pathways in rodents, they propose how these structures coordinate learning and flexible behavior.

In this study the authors show that in the mouse anterior thalamus, the activity of head-direction cells is selectively modulated by sensory stimuli and by the animal’s behavioral state.

Stathmin-2 is lost in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Here the authors show that stathmin-2 has an essential role in the maintenance of axon structure, with its loss from adult motor neurons resulting in axonal collapse and muscle denervation.

Wang et al. showed that genetic disruption of TFEB and v-ATPase-mediated lysosomal signaling leads to increased tau pathology but defective microglia activation, demonstrating an essential role of the lysosome in regulating microglia activity.

Hypertension can lead to cognitive impairment. However, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show that meningeal T cell-produced interleukin-17 activates border-associated macrophages, affecting neurovascular and cognitive functions in a mouse model of hypertension.

The study by Pallucchi et al. links the molecular identity of motoneuron and V2a interneuron subtypes to their function and uncovers orthogonal transcriptomic rules for their assembly into separate circuit modules controlling locomotor speed.

Panic disorder is characterized by uncontrollable fear accompanied with unique somatic symptoms. Kang, Kim et al. identify a pontomesencephalic PACAP pathway that plays a crucial role in panic-like behavioral and physiological alterations in mice.

Sayar-Atasoy et al. monitored the activity of hypothalamic AgRP hunger neurons throughout the day and showed that these neurons anticipate meal time by integrating information about past circadian feeding experience with ongoing metabolic needs.

Li et al. developed a base-editing system to edit mutations linked to autism. Targeting a mutation in Mef2c restored Mef2c protein levels in several brain regions and reversed behavioral changes in Mef2c-mutant mice.

The authors introduce a novel visual masking task and use recordings and optogenetics to reveal the role of visual cortex.

Using two-photon (2P) optogenetics and computational modeling, the authors find that neither space-based nor feature-based rules are sufficient to describe cell–cell interactions within the primary visual cortex (V1). Instead, models must include interactions between these cardinal axes.

Benisty, Barson et al. show that motor behaviors are represented by fast changes in the activity magnitude and functional connectivity across the mouse neocortex, which provides insight into the relationship between neural signals and behavior.

Bromberg-Martin, Feng and colleagues uncover conserved value computations underlying human and monkey information-seeking behavior and show that the lateral habenula sends value signals integrating information with reward and guides online decisions.

The ENIGMA-ORIGINs group presents a large and globally diverse pediatric neuroimaging dataset from birth to age 6. They use this resource to study the effects of sociodemographics and adverse birth outcomes on trajectories of brain volumes and cognition.

Facemap is a data analysis framework for tracking keypoints on mouse faces and relating them to large-scale neural activity. Both of these steps use state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks to achieve high precision and fast processing speeds.

Griggs, Norman et al. demonstrate a closed-loop ultrasound-based brain–machine interface (BMI) in rhesus macaques. The ultrasound BMI is capable of controlling eight independent movement directions and is stable across months without retraining.