Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Distinct prelimbic cortex neuronal responses to emotional states of others drive emotion recognition in adult mice.","authors":"Renad Jabarin, Alok Nath Mohapatra, Natali Ray, Shai Netser, Shlomo Wagner","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to perceive the emotional states of others, termed emotion recognition, allows individuals to adapt their conduct to the social environment. The brain mechanisms underlying this capacity, known to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), remain, however, elusive. Here, we show that adult mice can discern between emotional states of conspecifics. Fiber photometry recordings of calcium signals in the prelimbic (PrL) medial prefrontal cortex revealed inhibition of pyramidal neurons during investigation of emotionally aroused individuals, as opposed to transient excitation toward naive conspecifics. Chronic electrophysiological recordings at the single-cell level indicated social stimulus-specific responses in PrL neurons at the onset and conclusion of social investigation bouts, potentially regulating the initiation and termination of social interactions. Finally, optogenetic augmentation of the differential neuronal response enhanced emotion recognition, while its reduction eliminated such behavior. Thus, differential PrL neuronal response to individuals with distinct emotional states underlies murine emotion recognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143373915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modulation of sweet preference by neurosteroid-sensitive, δ-GABA_A receptors in adult mouse gustatory insular cortex.","authors":"Priscilla E Yevoo, Alfredo Fontanini, Arianna Maffei","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Taste preference is a fundamental driver of feeding behavior, influencing dietary choices and eating patterns. Extensive experimental evidence indicates that the gustatory cortex (GC) is engaged in taste perception, palatability, and preference. However, our knowledge of the neural and neurochemical signals regulating taste preference is limited. Neuromodulators can affect preferences, though their effects on neural circuits for taste are incompletely understood. Neurosteroids are of particular interest, as systemic administration of the neurosteroid allopregnanolone (ALLO), a positive allosteric modulator of extrasynaptic GABA_A receptors containing the delta subunit (δ-GABA_ARs), induces hyperphagia and increases intake of energy-rich food in humans and animals. The δ-GABA_ARs receptors produce a tonic inhibitory current and are widely distributed in the brain. However, information regarding their expression within gustatory circuits is lacking, and their role in taste preference has not been investigated. Here, we focused on GC to investigate whether activation of δ-GABA_ARs affects sweet taste preference in adult mice. Our data reveal that δ-GABA_ARs are expressed in multiple cell types within GC, mediate an ALLO-sensitive tonic current, decrease the behavioral sensitivity to sucrose, and reduce the preference for sweet taste in a cell-type-specific manner. Our findings demonstrate a fundamental role for δ-GABA_AR-mediated currents within GC in regulating taste sensitivity and preference in the adult mammalian brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143398691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transformations in prefrontal ensemble activity underlying rapid threat avoidance learning.","authors":"Christopher J Gabriel, Tanya A Gupta, Asai Sánchez-Fuentes, Zachary Zeidler, Scott A Wilke, Laura A DeNardo","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To survive, animals must rapidly learn to avoid aversive outcomes by predicting threats and taking preemptive actions to avoid them. Often, this involves identifying locations that are safe in the context of specific, impending threats and remaining in those locations until the threat passes. Thus, animals quickly learn how threat-predicting cues alter the implications of entering or leaving a safe location. The prelimbic subregion (PL) of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) integrates learned associations to influence threat avoidance strategies.¹^,²^,³^,⁴^,⁵^,⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹^,¹² These processes become dysfunctional in mood and anxiety disorders, which are characterized by excessive avoidance.¹³^,¹⁴ Prior work largely focused on the role of PL activity in avoidance behaviors that are fully established,¹²^,¹⁵^,¹⁶^,¹⁷ leaving the prefrontal mechanisms driving avoidance learning poorly understood. To determine when and how learning-related changes emerge, we recorded PL neural activity using miniscope Ca²⁺ imaging¹⁸^,¹⁹ as mice rapidly learned to avoid a cued threat by accessing a safe location. Early in learning, PL population dynamics accurately predicted trial outcomes and tracked individual learning rates. Once behavioral performance stabilized, neurons that encoded avoidance behaviors or risky exploration were strongly modulated by the conditioned tone. Our findings reveal that, during avoidance learning, the PL rapidly generates novel representations of whether mice will take avoidance or exploratory actions during an impending threat. We reveal the sequence of transformations that unfold in the PL and how they relate to individual learning rates.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143406289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evolution of a vascular plant pathogen is associated with the loss of CRISPR-Cas and an increase in genome plasticity and virulence genes.","authors":"Misha Paauw, Willem E W Schravesande, Nanne W Taks, Martijn Rep, Sebastian Pfeilmeier, Harrold A van den Burg","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A major question in infectious disease research is how bacteria have evolved into highly niche-adapted pathogens with efficient host infection strategies. The plant pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas campestris is subdivided into pathovars that occupy two distinct niches of the same plant leaf: the vasculature and the mesophyll tissue. Using a pangenome comparison of 94 X. campestris isolates, we discovered that the vasculature-infecting pathovar emerged in one monophyletic clade, has lost its CRISPR-Cas system, and showed an increase in both genomic plasticity and acquisition of virulence factors, such as type III effector proteins, compared with the ancestral pathovar. In addition, we show that the CRISPR spacers of isolates belonging to the ancestral pathovar map to plasmids that circulate in Xanthomonas populations and encode high numbers of transposons and virulence factors, suggesting that CRISPR-Cas restricts gene flow toward this pathovar. Indeed, we demonstrate experimentally reduced plasmid uptake in a CRISPR-Cas-encoding isolate. Based on our data, we propose that the loss of the CRISPR-Cas system was a pivotal step in X. campestris evolution by facilitating increased genome dynamics and the emergence of the vasculature-adapted X. campestris pathovar campestris, a major pathogen of Brassica crops.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143398684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Semantic language decoding across participants and stimulus modalities.","authors":"Jerry Tang, Alexander G Huth","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.024","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Brain decoders that reconstruct language from semantic representations have the potential to improve communication for people with impaired language production. However, training a semantic decoder for a participant currently requires many hours of brain responses to linguistic stimuli, and people with impaired language production often also have impaired language comprehension. In this study, we tested whether language can be decoded from a goal participant without using any linguistic training data from that participant. We trained semantic decoders on brain responses from separate reference participants and then used functional alignment to transfer the decoders to the goal participant. Cross-participant decoder predictions were semantically related to the stimulus words, even when functional alignment was performed using movies with no linguistic content. To assess how much semantic representations are shared between language and vision, we compared functional alignment accuracy using story and movie stimuli and found that performance was comparable in most cortical regions. Finally, we tested whether cross-participant decoders could be robust to lesions by excluding brain regions from the goal participant prior to functional alignment and found that cross-participant decoders do not depend on data from any single brain region. These results demonstrate that cross-participant decoding can reduce the amount of linguistic training data required from a goal participant and potentially enable language decoding from participants who struggle with both language production and language comprehension.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143370735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aversive generalization in human amygdala neurons.","authors":"Tamar Reitich-Stolero, Dean Halperin, Genela Morris, Lilach Goldstein, Lottem Bergman, Firas Fahoum, Ido Strauss, Rony Paz","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Generalization around aversive stimuli is a key feature of learning and adaptive decision making,¹^,²^,³^,⁴^,⁵ but it can be maladaptive if subjects overgeneralize and respond with fear to stimuli that are only loosely similar to the original experience.⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹^,¹² Human imaging studies indicate that the amygdala, a hub of emotional learning, is involved in such overgeneralization,²^,⁹^,¹³^,¹⁴^,¹⁵^,¹⁶^,¹⁷ and studies in animal models revealed neural correlates of generalized aversive stimuli and identified changes in response properties of single neurons.¹⁸^,¹⁹^,²⁰^,²¹^,²²^,²³^,²⁴^,²⁵^,²⁶^,²⁷^,²⁸^,²⁹ Yet, it remains unclear if human neurons contribute specifically in aversive situations and, importantly, if they contribute to subsequent behavior even in a safe environment. We recorded single neurons in human subjects while they engaged in probabilistic loss/gain conditioning, followed by a choice task that included additional stimuli and when the original conditioned stimulus no longer entails an aversive (loss) outcome. We find wider behavioral generalization around the aversive stimulus accompanied by a selective increase in amygdala neural responses that were correlated with the degree of individual generalization. In addition, neural activity in the amygdala was predictive of the later choice on a trial-by-trial basis and specific to loss trials. Whereas other brain regions also modulated their activity during generalization, only amygdala neurons signal a trial-specific and loss-specific generalization. The findings reveal that human amygdala neurons play a role in aversive overgeneralization and contribute to generalized choice behavior in a later safe environment and suggest a single-neuron substrate that might enhance anxious and traumatic behaviors.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143406287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mechanistic basis of temperature adaptation in microtubule dynamics across frog species.","authors":"Luca Troman, Ella de Gaulejac, Abin Biswas, Jennifer Stiens, Benno Kuropka, Carolyn A Moores, Simone Reber","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.022","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.022","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cellular processes are remarkably effective across diverse temperature ranges, even with highly conserved proteins. In the context of the microtubule cytoskeleton, which is critically involved in a wide range of cellular activities, this is particularly striking, as tubulin is one of the most conserved proteins while microtubule dynamic instability is highly temperature sensitive. Here, we leverage the diversity of natural tubulin variants from three closely related frog species that live at different temperatures. We determine the microtubule structure across all three species at between 3.0 and 3.6 Å resolution by cryo-electron microscopy and find small differences at the β-tubulin lateral interactions. Using in vitro reconstitution assays and quantitative biochemistry, we show that tubulin's free energy scales inversely with temperature. The observed weakening of lateral contacts and the low apparent activation energy for tubulin incorporation provide an explanation for the overall stability and higher growth rates of microtubules in cold-adapted frog species. This study thus broadens our conceptual framework for understanding microtubule dynamics and provides insights into how conserved cellular processes are tailored to different ecological niches.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"612-628.e6"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142969962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The neuroethology of ant navigation.","authors":"Thomas Collett, Paul Graham, Stanley Heinze","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.034","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Unlike any other group of animals, all ant species are social: individual ants share the food they gather with their nestmates and as a consequence they must repeatedly leave their nest to find food and then return home with it. These back-and-forth foraging trips have been studied for about a century and much of our growing understanding of the strategies underlying animal navigation has come from these studies. One important strategy that ants use to keep track of where they are on a foraging trip is 'path integration', in which they continuously update a 'home vector' that gives their estimated distance and direction from the nest. As path integration accumulates errors, it cannot be relied on to bring ants precisely home: such precision is accomplished by using views of the nest acquired before they start foraging. Further learning is scaffolded by home vectors or remembered food vectors, which guide a route and help in learning useful views experienced on the way. Many species rely on olfaction as well as vision for route guidance and the full details of their foraging paths have revealed how ants use a mix of innate and learnt multisensory cues. Wood ants, a species on which we focus in this review, take an oscillating path along a pheromone trail to sample odours, but acquire visual information only at the peaks and troughs of the oscillations. To provide a working model of the neural basis of the multimodal navigational strategies of ants, we outline the anatomy and functioning of major central brain areas and neural circuits - the central complex, mushroom bodies and lateral accessory lobes - that are involved in the coordination of navigational behaviour and the learning of visual and olfactory patterns. Because ant brains have not yet been well-studied, we rely on the work that has been done with other species - notably, Drosophila, silkworm moths and bees - to derive plausible neural circuitry that can deliver the ants' navigational strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 3","pages":"R110-R124"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143188534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Molecular biology: In competition, actin filament turnover saves the day.","authors":"Cristian Suarez, David R Kovar","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.036","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cellular actin cytoskeleton networks compete for limited actin monomers. New in vitro reconstitutions with purified proteins reveal that without network turnover, the strongest networks monopolize all the resources. However, with turnover, weaker networks survive and coexist with stronger networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 3","pages":"R101-R104"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143188511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Activity of a descending neuron associated with visually elicited flight saccades in Drosophila.","authors":"Elhanan Buchsbaum, Bettina Schnell","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Approaching threats are perceived through visual looming, a rapid expansion of an image on the retina. Visual looming triggers defensive responses such as freezing, flight, turning, or take-off in a wide variety of organisms, from mice to fish to insects.¹^,²^,³^,⁴ In response to looming, flies perform rapid evasive turns known as saccades.⁵ Saccades can also be initiated spontaneously to change direction during flight.⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹ Two types of descending neurons (DNs), DNaX and DNb01, were previously shown to exhibit activity correlated with both spontaneous and looming-elicited saccades in Drosophila.¹⁰^,¹¹ As they do not receive direct input from the visual system, it has remained unclear how visually elicited flight turns are controlled by the nervous system. DNp03 receives input from looming-sensitive visual projection neurons and provides output to wing motor neurons¹²^,¹³ and is therefore a promising candidate for controlling flight saccades. Using whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from DNp03 in head-fixed flying Drosophila, we showed that DNp03 responds to ipsilateral visual looming in a behavioral-state-dependent manner. We further explored how DNp03 activity relates to the variable behavioral output. Sustained DNp03 activity, persisting after the visual stimulus, was the strongest predictor of saccade execution. However, DNp03 activity alone cannot fully explain the variability in behavioral responses. Combined with optogenetic activation experiments during free flight, these results suggest an important but not exclusive role for DNp03 in controlling saccades, advancing our understanding of how visual information is transformed into motor commands for rapid evasive maneuvers in flying insects.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"665-671.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142946359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}