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How sensory signals from both sides of the body are integrated into a single percept is not well understood. Park et al. show that callosal signaling supports the integration of bilateral tactile stimuli in a state- and task-dependent manner.

Employing pharmacology, genetics and all-optical approaches in zebrafish, Braaker et al. find that neuronal activity influences the growth of myelin sheaths along axons by signaling through metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 on oligodendrocytes.

The authors describe a susceptibility of the peripheral nervous system to neuronal senescence with age or injury relevant for sensory dysfunction, such as chronic pain.

Social status mediates individual differences in methamphetamine-seeking by modulating dopaminergic pathways. In subordinate rodents, the mesolimbic pathway is stronger, and the mesocortical pathway is weaker, whereas dominant rodents show the opposite pattern.

Neuron-specific DNA methylation and intragenic enhancers target the Rett syndrome protein methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 to regulate genes that delineate closely related neuron types, suggesting breakdown of fine-scale neuronal specification in developmental disorders.

Widespread, slow fluctuations in brain blood flow detected via functional MRI and neural activity are integrated with systemic physiological dynamics across the body. We showed this brain–body integration associates with the arousal response orchestrated by the autonomic nervous system.

The brain and body are necessarily connected. Here the authors show that brain blood flow and electrical activity are coupled with systemic physiological changes in the body.

The developmental origin of behavioral individuality is unclear. The authors show that a temporal sequence of genetically encoded stochastic mechanisms explains variation in stereotyped neuronal circuits.

Eleanor Maguire was a visionary cognitive neuroscientist whose research transformed our understanding of how the brain supports memory, navigation, and imagination.

Sleep has restorative properties, but the mechanisms remain largely unknown. A study in Drosophila melanogaster reveals that glia dynamically monitor metabolic changes in the brain that accumulate from effortful behavior, triggering the need for rest and sleep.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift from traditional in-person conferences to virtual and hybrid formats was welcomed for its accessible, cost-effective approach to sharing scientific knowledge and connecting people. Here, we discuss an effective hybrid format that combines in-person and online elements to foster inclusivity by providing a flexible, cost-effective alternative to in-person meetings.

Navigation relies on detecting left versus right body asymmetries for gaze and course stability. A central three-layer optic flow-sensitive network with competitive lateral disinhibition extracts asymmetries from complex motion patterns.

In this work, the authors performed a single-cell genotyping and transcriptomics analysis, revealing cell-type-specific and nonautonomous effects of mTOR pathway mutations in mosaic focal cortical dysplasia.

The cerebral cortex of the human brain is crucial and complex, and includes different subtypes of neuron that need to be specified during development. How this process is regulated is unclear. In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Nano et al. curate and mine a compendium cell atlas of human cortical development to identify gene programs that drive neuron subtype specification and validate a mechanism using brain organoid models.

Nano et al. introduce a pipeline to generate meta-atlases of the human brain from existing single-cell datasets and extract gene modules linked to cell fate specification. Perturbing these programs in human cortical chimeroids validated their roles in cell type specification.

Sznajder et al. identified a molecular link between autism and myotonic dystrophy, showing that a tandem repeat mutation in a single gene can disrupt splicing of multiple autism-related genes during brain development, leading to autism-like traits.