{"title":"Dopamine says do that again","authors":"Luis A. Mejia","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01995-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01995-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 6","pages":"1115-1115"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144237173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Noninvasive reduction of neural rigidity alters autistic behaviors in humans","authors":"Takamitsu Watanabe, Hidenori Yamasue","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01961-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01961-y","url":null,"abstract":"Autistic behaviors correlate with reductions in specific brain-state transitions in global neural dynamics, implying that the mitigation of such rigid brain dynamics may alter autistic traits. To examine this possibility, we investigated longitudinal behavioral effects of state-dependent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in autistic adults. We found that excitatory TMS over the right parietal lobule decreased neural rigidity, which commensurately reduced social and nonsocial autistic behaviors. Specifically, TMS-induced neural flexibility immediately decreased cognitive inflexibility and slowly reduced overstable perception and atypical nonverbal communication. In particular, perceptual overstability was reduced after TMS-induced neural flexibility strengthened the coupling between the frontoparietal and visual networks, whereas atypical nonverbal communication became less explicit when the neural flexibility enhanced the coupling between the frontoparietal, default mode and salience networks. These results indicate that alteration of neural rigidity could change multiple autistic traits. Autism is associated with inflexibility of brain dynamics. Watanabe and Yamasue show that TMS over the right superior parietal lobule while the brain is ‘stuck’ in a certain state reduces this rigidity and relieves various autistic traits.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 6","pages":"1348-1360"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01961-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RNA dysregulation impairs stress resilience in aged neurons","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01953-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01953-y","url":null,"abstract":"Aging is a primary risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. This study shows that key RNA pathways are disrupted in old neurons, including splicing and the stress response. Because of these changes, the aging brain has reduced resilience to new stress, which might predispose old neurons to disease.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 6","pages":"1124-1125"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144218884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Takahiro Noda, Eike Kienle, Jens-Bastian Eppler, Dominik F. Aschauer, Matthias Kaschube, Yonatan Loewenstein, Simon Rumpel
{"title":"Homeostasis of a representational map in the neocortex","authors":"Takahiro Noda, Eike Kienle, Jens-Bastian Eppler, Dominik F. Aschauer, Matthias Kaschube, Yonatan Loewenstein, Simon Rumpel","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01982-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01982-7","url":null,"abstract":"Cortical function, including sensory processing, is surprisingly resilient to neuron loss during aging and neurodegeneration. In this Article, we used the mouse auditory cortex to investigate how homeostatic mechanisms protect the representational map of sounds after neuron loss. We combined two-photon calcium imaging with targeted microablation of 30–40 sound-responsive neurons in layer 2/3. Microablation led to a temporary disturbance of the representational map, but it recovered in the following days. Recovery was primarily driven by neurons that were initially unresponsive to sounds but gained responsiveness and strengthened the network’s correlation structure. By contrast, selective microablation of inhibitory neurons caused prolonged disturbance, characterized by destabilized sound responses. Our results link individual neuron tuning and plasticity to the stability of the population-level representational map, highlighting homeostatic mechanisms that safeguard sensory processing in the neocortex. This study investigates how homeostatic mechanisms endow sensory representations in the auditory cortex with resilience against neuron loss. The map of sounds has the ability to recover after microablation by recruiting previously unresponsive neurons.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 7","pages":"1533-1545"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01982-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144219037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resilient cortical maps","authors":"Yaniv Ziv","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01957-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01957-8","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the loss of neurons during aging and the early stages of neurodegenerative disease, many cortical brain functions remain remarkably intact. Although this resilience is traditionally attributed to redundancy in neural networks, a new study uncovers a more active mechanism: dynamic homeostatic processes that preserve cortical representations in the face of neuronal loss. These processes recruit previously unengaged neurons and rearrange neuronal activity patterns to compensate for neuronal loss and maintain the integrity of representational maps in the brain.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 7","pages":"1368-1369"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144219038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The brain creates action-based maps of the world near the body","authors":"","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01959-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01959-6","url":null,"abstract":"Certain neurons have visual and auditory receptive fields anchored to body parts. We show that these neurons reflect the value of interacting with objects near the body, not just their spatial locations. A collection of these neurons furnishes animals with an egocentric map: a predictive model of the near-body environment.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 6","pages":"1128-1129"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144219039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sachin P. Vaidya, Guanchun Li, Raymond A. Chitwood, Yiding Li, Jeffrey C. Magee
{"title":"Formation of an expanding memory representation in the hippocampus","authors":"Sachin P. Vaidya, Guanchun Li, Raymond A. Chitwood, Yiding Li, Jeffrey C. Magee","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01986-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01986-3","url":null,"abstract":"How brain networks connected by labile synapses store new information without catastrophically overwriting previous memories remains poorly understood. To examine this, we tracked the same population of hippocampal CA1 place cells (PCs) as mice learned a task for 7 days. We found evidence of memory formation as both the number of PCs maintaining a stable place field and the stability of individual PCs progressively increased across the week until most of the representation was composed of long-term stable PCs. The stable PCs disproportionately represented task-related learned information, were retrieved earlier within a behavioral session and showed a strong correlation with behavioral performance. Both the initial formation of PCs and their retrieval on subsequent days were accompanied by prominent signs of behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP), suggesting that even stable PCs were re-formed by synaptic plasticity each session. Further experimental evidence supported by a cascade-type state model indicates that CA1 PCs increase their stability each day they are active, eventually forming a highly stable population. The results suggest that CA1 memory is implemented by an increase in the likelihood of new neuron-specific synaptic plasticity, as opposed to extensive long-term synaptic weight stabilization. Multiday imaging of CA1 neurons during learning reveals that the representation stabilizes as the number of readily retrievable, information-rich and stable place cells increases and suggests novel mechanisms of hippocampal memory formation.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 7","pages":"1510-1518"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.comhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01986-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144211362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jean-Paul Noel, Edoardo Balzani, Luigi Acerbi, Julius Benson, The International Brain Laboratory, Cristina Savin, Dora E. Angelaki
{"title":"A common computational and neural anomaly across mouse models of autism","authors":"Jean-Paul Noel, Edoardo Balzani, Luigi Acerbi, Julius Benson, The International Brain Laboratory, Cristina Savin, Dora E. Angelaki","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01965-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01965-8","url":null,"abstract":"Computational psychiatry studies suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) inflexibly update their expectations. Here we leveraged high-yield rodent psychophysics, extensive behavioral modeling and brain-wide single-cell extracellular recordings to assess whether mice with different genetic perturbations associated with ASD show this same computational anomaly, and if so, what neurophysiological features are shared across genotypes. Mice harboring mutations in Fmr1, Cntnap2 or Shank3B show a blunted update of priors during decision-making. Compared with mice that flexibly updated their priors, inflexible updating of priors was associated with a shift in the weighting of prior encoding from sensory to frontal cortices. Furthermore, frontal areas in mouse models of ASD showed more units encoding deviations from the animals’ long-run prior, and sensory responses did not differentiate between expected and unexpected observations. These findings suggest that distinct genetic instantiations of ASD may yield common neurophysiological and behavioral phenotypes. Noel et al. show aberrant updating of expectations in three distinct mouse models of autism spectrum disorder. Brain-wide neurophysiology data suggest this stems from excess units encoding deviations from prior mean and a lack of sensory prediction errors in frontal areas.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 7","pages":"1519-1532"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144201508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wenlu Li, Paul George, Matine M. Azadian, MingMing Ning, Amar Dhand, Steven C. Cramer, S. Thomas Carmichael, Eng H. Lo
{"title":"Changing genes, cells and networks to reprogram the brain after stroke","authors":"Wenlu Li, Paul George, Matine M. Azadian, MingMing Ning, Amar Dhand, Steven C. Cramer, S. Thomas Carmichael, Eng H. Lo","doi":"10.1038/s41593-025-01981-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41593-025-01981-8","url":null,"abstract":"Important advances have been made in reperfusion therapies for acute ischemic stroke. However, a majority of patients are either ineligible for or do not respond to treatments and continue to have considerable functional deficits. Stroke results in a pathological disruption of the neurovascular unit (NVU) that involves blood–brain barrier leakage, glial activation, neuronal damage and chronic inflammation, all of which create a microenvironment that hinders recovery. Therefore, finding ways to promote central nervous system recovery remains the holy grail of stroke research. Here we propose a conceptual framework to synthesize recent progress in the field, which is currently dispersed and disconnected in the literature. We suggest that stroke recovery requires an integrated reprogramming process throughout the brain that occurs at multiple levels, including changes in gene expression, endogenous cellular transdifferentiation within the NVU, and reorganization of larger-scale neural and social networks. This review explores how stroke induces changes in gene expression, cell behavior and brain networks, offering insights into recovery. It highlights strategies to enhance cellular reprogramming and brain network reorganization for improved outcomes.","PeriodicalId":19076,"journal":{"name":"Nature neuroscience","volume":"28 6","pages":"1130-1145"},"PeriodicalIF":20.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144192725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}