Featured
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News |
Obesity drugs have another superpower: taming inflammation
The blockbuster medications that reduce body weight also reduce inflammation in organs such as the brain, raising hopes that they can treat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
- Mariana Lenharo
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News |
This fast-living marsupial chooses sex over sleep — and dies young
Male antechinus make the most of their single breeding season by forgoing shut-eye.
- Sara Reardon
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Article |
Cortical regulation of helping behaviour towards others in pain
A study describes the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in coding and regulating helping behaviour exhibited by mice towards others experiencing pain.
- Mingmin Zhang
- , Ye Emily Wu
- & Weizhe Hong
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Article |
A dedicated hypothalamic oxytocin circuit controls aversive social learning
In mice, the neural mechanisms underlying aversive social learning, specifically avoidance and fear after defeat, involve oxytocin signalling in the anterior subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral part.
- Takuya Osakada
- , Rongzhen Yan
- & Dayu Lin
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Correspondence |
Funders must get behind brain project data sharing
- Helena Ledmyr
- , Mathew Abrams
- & Randy McIntosh
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News |
How does chronic stress harm the gut? New clues emerge
A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.
- Max Kozlov
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Article |
Top-down control of flight by a non-canonical cortico-amygdala pathway
This study describes a projection from the medial prefrontal cortex to the central amygdala that is involved in the regulation of defensive responses to threat.
- Chandrashekhar D. Borkar
- , Claire E. Stelly
- & Jonathan P. Fadok
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News Feature |
The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?
There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head.
- Mariana Lenharo
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Article
| Open AccessAlternative splicing of latrophilin-3 controls synapse formation
Latrophilin-3 organizes synapses through a convergent dual-pathway mechanism in which Gαs signalling is activated and phase-separated postsynaptic protein scaffolds are recruited.
- Shuai Wang
- , Chelsea DeLeon
- & Thomas C. Südhof
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News & Views |
From the archive: the royal ‘we’, and an experiment in telegraphy
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
Medical AI falters when assessing patients it hasn’t seen
Physicians rely on algorithms for personalized medicine — but an analysis of schizophrenia trials shows that the tools fail to adapt to new data sets.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Research Briefing |
Observing mammalian cerebellum development through an evolutionary lens
Tracking the gene-expression profiles of individual cerebellar cells during development in humans, mice and opossums revealed evolutionarily conserved as well as species-specific cellular and molecular features.
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Research Briefing |
Drain ‘pipes’ behind the nose clear cerebrospinal fluid from the brain
This study reveals a distinctive network of lymphatic vessels at the back of the nose that serves as a major hub for the outflow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to deep cervical lymph nodes in the neck. These deep cervical lymphatics remain intact with ageing, and their pharmacological activation enhanced CSF drainage in mice.
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Nature Podcast |
The Nature Podcast highlights of 2023
The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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Nature Podcast |
What were some of the biggest stories of 2023? Join us for the Nature Podcast quiz!
In a game of twenty questions our contestants stretch their memories to remember some of the science stories that made headlines this year.
- Shamini Bundell
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Article
| Open AccessProtracted neuronal recruitment in the temporal lobes of young children
A stream of young neurons migrating into the entorhinal cortex (EC) continues postnatally in humans, but not in macaques; these young neurons, which belong to a unique class of local circuit cells, continue to be recruited in the EC during infancy and early childhood.
- Marcos Assis Nascimento
- , Sean Biagiotti
- & Shawn F. Sorrells
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News & Views Forum |
2D materials ratchet up biorealism in computing
A transistor made from atomically thin materials mimics the way in which connections between neurons are strengthened by activity. Two perspectives reveal why physicists and neuroscientists share equal enthusiasm for this feat of engineering.
- Frank H. L. Koppens
- , James B. Aimone
- & Frances S. Chance
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News & Views |
Mysterious ultraslow and ordered activity observed in the cortex
Neurons with a role in navigation fire sequentially in mice, forming patterns that repeat every minute or so — but which are neither spatially organized, nor related to any visible behaviour.
- Gilles Laurent
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Article
| Open AccessMinute-scale oscillatory sequences in medial entorhinal cortex
Neural population activity in the medial entorhinal cortex of mice can be organized into ultraslow oscillatory sequences, with periods extending up to the minute range.
- Soledad Gonzalo Cogno
- , Horst A. Obenhaus
- & Edvard I. Moser
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Article
| Open AccessRNA-mediated symmetry breaking enables singular olfactory receptor choice
Messenger RNAs transcribed from olfactory-receptor genes may have non-coding functions that include recruitment of transcriptional enhancers and inhibition of potentially thousands of competing alleles to ensure stable transcription of a single allele.
- Ariel D. Pourmorady
- , Elizaveta V. Bashkirova
- & Stavros Lomvardas
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News & Views |
Plastic pollution, viral evolution and drowned coasts: wrapping up a year of remarkable science
Highlights from News & Views published in late 2023.
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Article |
Cortical reactivations predict future sensory responses
Offline cortical reactivations predict the gradual drift and separation in sensory cortical response patterns and may enhance sensory discrimination.
- Nghia D. Nguyen
- , Andrew Lutas
- & Mark L. Andermann
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Editorial |
Why mega brain project teams need to be talking to each other
As large-scale neuroscience projects start to yield results, sharing data standards will become increasingly important.
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Spotlight |
I study depression in the lab and advocate for mental health in academia
Annapoorna P. K. tells Nature about her work on understanding depression both in and outside the lab.
- Pratik Pawar
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News & Views Forum |
Cellular atlases of the entire mouse brain
In a huge collaborative effort, millions of cells in the mouse brain have been mapped in detail. Two scientists examine the resulting wealth of insights into gene regulation in brain cells, neuronal connections and how our own brains evolved.
- Maria Antonietta Tosches
- & Heather J. Lee
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News |
How our brains decode speech: special neurons process certain sounds
Wire-thin probes inserted into the brains of living people show the parts played by individual neurons.
- Saima Sidik
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News |
Neurons responsible for poor sleep and stress found in mice
Frightened mice sleep poorly. Researchers have identified at least some of the neurons responsible.
- Jude Coleman
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Article
| Open AccessDynamic behaviour restructuring mediates dopamine-dependent credit assignment
Initial dopamine self-stimulations reinforced not only the stimulation-producing target action, but also actions similar to the target action and actions that occurred a few seconds before stimulation, and repeated pairings led to a gradual refinement of the behavioural repertoire to home in on the target actions.
- Jonathan C. Y. Tang
- , Vitor Paixao
- & Rui M. Costa
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Article
| Open AccessSingle-cell DNA methylome and 3D multi-omic atlas of the adult mouse brain
Methylome-based clustering and cross-modality integration with companion datasets from the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network enabled the construction of a 3D multi-omic genome atlas of the adult mouse brain featuring thousands of cell-type-specific profiles.
- Hanqing Liu
- , Qiurui Zeng
- & Joseph R. Ecker
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Article
| Open AccessA high-resolution transcriptomic and spatial atlas of cell types in the whole mouse brain
A transcriptomic cell-type atlas of the whole adult mouse brain with ~5,300 clusters built from single-cell and spatial transcriptomic datasets with more than eight million cells reveals remarkable cell type diversity across the brain and unique cell type characteristics of different brain regions.
- Zizhen Yao
- , Cindy T. J. van Velthoven
- & Hongkui Zeng
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Article
| Open AccessA transcriptomic taxonomy of mouse brain-wide spinal projecting neurons
In this study, the authors develop a comprehensive taxonomy of brain-wide SPNs, identifying several novel subsets via their transcriptional signatures.
- Carla C. Winter
- , Anne Jacobi
- & Zhigang He
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Article
| Open AccessLarge-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex
High-density single-neuron recordings show diverse tuning for acoustic and phonetic features across layers in human auditory speech cortex.
- Matthew K. Leonard
- , Laura Gwilliams
- & Edward F. Chang
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Article
| Open AccessMolecularly defined and spatially resolved cell atlas of the whole mouse brain
A comprehensive cell atlas of the whole mouse brain with high molecular and spatial resolution is generated.
- Meng Zhang
- , Xingjie Pan
- & Xiaowei Zhuang
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Article
| Open AccessConserved and divergent gene regulatory programs of the mammalian neocortex
A single-cell multiomics analysis of over 200,000 cells of the primary motor cortex of human, macaque, marmoset and mouse shows that divergence of transcription factor expression corresponds to species-specific epigenome landscapes, and conserved and divergent gene regulatory features are reflected in the evolution of the three-dimensional genome.
- Nathan R. Zemke
- , Ethan J. Armand
- & Bing Ren
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Article
| Open AccessEvolution of neuronal cell classes and types in the vertebrate retina
Single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic analysis of retina from 17 vertebrate species shows high conservation of retinal cell types and suggests that midget retinal ganglion cells in primates evolved from orthologous cells in ancestral mammals.
- Joshua Hahn
- , Aboozar Monavarfeshani
- & Karthik Shekhar
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Article
| Open AccessSingle-cell analysis of chromatin accessibility in the adult mouse brain
An atlas of candidate cis-regulatory DNA elements (cCREs) in the adult mouse brain unravels the transcriptional regulatory programs that drive the heterogeneity and complexity of brain structure and function.
- Songpeng Zu
- , Yang Eric Li
- & Bing Ren
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Article
| Open AccessThe molecular cytoarchitecture of the adult mouse brain
To construct a comprehensive atlas of cell types in each brain structure, we paired high-throughput single-nucleus RNA sequencing with Slide-seq, a recently developed spatial transcriptomics method with near-cellular resolution, across the entire mouse brain.
- Jonah Langlieb
- , Nina S. Sachdev
- & Evan Z. Macosko
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Article
| Open AccessBrain-wide correspondence of neuronal epigenomics and distant projections
This study uses epi-retro-seq to link single-cell epigenomes and cell types to long-distance projections for neurons dissected from different regions projecting to different targets across the whole mouse brain.
- Jingtian Zhou
- , Zhuzhu Zhang
- & Edward M. Callaway
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Article |
A molecular switch for neuroprotective astrocyte reactivity
The authors identify a molecular switch that regulates the balance between neurotoxic and neuroprotective astrocyte populations, with potential application in the treatment of glaucoma and other optic neuropathies.
- Evan G. Cameron
- , Michael Nahmou
- & Jeffrey L. Goldberg
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Research Highlight |
Wee VR googles give mice a true immersive experience
Headset could make it easier to study reactions in the animals’ brains to simulated situations.
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Book Review |
The unsung geniuses who uncovered why we sleep and dream
Just 100 years ago, we understood astoundingly little about sleep and dreaming. A tight-knit band of researchers changed things, against sometimes considerable odds.
- Jennifer L. Martin
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News Feature |
Is cannabis bad for teens? Here’s what the data say
Ten years after cannabis was first legalized for casual use in adults, scientists are struggling to provide evidence-based recommendations about the risks to young people.
- Anil Oza
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News |
How CRISPR gene editing could help treat Alzheimer’s
Some researchers hoping that gene-editing technology can conquer forms of Alzheimer’s caused by genetic mutations.
- Tosin Thompson
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Article
| Open AccessTAF15 amyloid filaments in frontotemporal lobar degeneration
Cryogenic electron microscopy structures of amyloid filaments extracted from patient brains reveal that the protein TAF15 forms filaments that characterize certain cases of frontotemporal lobar degeneration.
- Stephan Tetter
- , Diana Arseni
- & Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon
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News |
Brain implants help people to recover after severe head injury
Electrodes placed inside the brains of five people with traumatic injuries improved recipients’ performance in attention and memory tests.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Article
| Open AccessCellular development and evolution of the mammalian cerebellum
Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing data from the cerebellum of human, mouse and opossum is used to analyse the developmental dynamics of cell types and states in mammalian cerebellum and provide evolutionary insights.
- Mari Sepp
- , Kevin Leiss
- & Henrik Kaessmann
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Article
| Open AccessDisease-specific tau filaments assemble via polymorphic intermediates
A time-resolved cryogenic electron microscopy analysis provides structural information on the processes of primary and secondary nucleation of tau amyloid formation, with implications for the development of new therapies.
- Sofia Lövestam
- , David Li
- & Sjors H. W. Scheres
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News |
This sparrow massively expands part of its brain in preparation for mating
The trick baffles researchers — but they are getting closer to understanding how the songbird does it.
- Anil Oza
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News |
These brain cells could influence how fast you eat — and when you stop
Scientists found the cells in mice — and say they could lead to a better understanding of human appetite.
- Carissa Wong
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