Volume 24 Issue 4, April 2021

Persistent negative emotional states, such as anxiety, suppress social behavior and vice versa. A new report identifies a novel neural circuit that generates persistent anxiety states and describes how competing excitatory and inhibitory components of this circuit battle to pattern social behavior.

How does the intricate balance of gene regulation and expression within individual neurons relate to electrophysiological oscillations and, ultimately, cognition? In a new study, Berto and colleagues take an important step toward addressing this question by correlating oscillatory biomarkers of successful memory encoding with gene expression on a within-participant basis.

Mandates to include both sexes are a critical step toward improving the translational value of preclinical research, but they will not succeed without intentional, large-scale shifts in scientific incentive structures and publishing standards.

Rare rewards amplify dopamine neuron responses, even when conventionally defined prediction errors are identical. This suggests that individual dopamine neurons are sensitive to predicted reward distributions and can facilitate the learning of complex incentive structures.

Bonapersona and colleagues describe how historical control data can be used to improve statistical power while reducing the number of animals required in experiments. They present an open-source tool, RePAIR, that can be used to apply this approach.

Paredes et al. identify bidirectional crosstalk between the neural and the vascular compartment in the developing CNS required for oligodendrocyte precursor cell specification and mediated by an angiopoietin1–Tie2–TGFß1 signaling axis.

Oxidized phosphatidylcholines found in MS lesions are not just markers of oxidative stress but are also promoters of demyelination and axon injury. Microglia suppress oxidized-phosphatidylcholine-mediated neurodegeneration by phagocytosis through TREM2.

The authors define two functionally distinct external globus pallidus basal ganglia pathways and their differential contributions to motor and cognitive Parkinsonian deficits in mice.

Zhang et al. show in mice that the medial preoptic area antagonistically regulates stress-induced anxiety and parental behaviors, coordinated by opposing roles of its glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons through their competitive interactions.

This study shows that a subpopulation of astrocytes in the central amygdala (CeA) expresses the oxytocin receptor (OTR) and that OTR activation in astrocytes underlies the anxiolytic and positive reinforcement effects of oxytocin in the CeA.

Pain hypersensitivity can result from tissue injury and from depression. This study in mice shows that distinct thalamocortical pathways mediate allodynia associated with injury and a stress-induced depression-like state, respectively.

Berto et al. combine human intracranial brain oscillations recorded during mnemonic processing and measures of gene expression from brain tissue surgically removed from the same individuals to uncover gene expression patterns relevant to memory in humans.

We propose that synapses compute probability distributions over weights, not just point estimates. Using probabilistic inference, we derive a new set of synaptic learning rules and show that they speed up learning in neural networks.

Blum et al. performed single-nucleus RNA sequencing of the adult mouse spinal cord. This analysis revealed heterogeneity in the autonomic and skeletal motor systems and provides a resource to study motor neurons in health and disease.

Eze et al. use single-cell sequencing and immunohistochemical validation to create an atlas of early human brain development. In the telencephalon, they discover a diversity of progenitor subtypes, including two that are enriched in humans.

Single-cell RNA-seq and CITE-seq were used to profile the glioblastoma immune landscape in humans and mice, revealing the diversity and dynamics of tumor macrophages as the disease progresses from initial diagnosis to recurrence.