Volume 24 Issue 9, September 2021

Shamash et al. probe the navigational strategies mice use as they escape from a threat. By systematically placing and removing obstacles blocking their initial path, the authors find evidence that mice memorize intermediate ‘subgoal’ locations to find their way home.

Everyday phrases like ‘top dog’ and ‘low status’ suggest that we may mentally represent social and spatial information similarly. To what extent is that true? New research suggests that, like physical space, social knowledge is encoded as a cognitive map in the human brain and represented with a grid-like code.

Schaeffer and Iadecola review the anatomical, molecular and functional heterogeneity of the neurovasculature and highlight the coordinated interaction of factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the brain in its dynamic regulation and role in disease.

The conventional view is that the cortex generates brain oscillations, while subcortical structures control global sleep–wake switching. This study shows that the cortex plays an important role in both global state control and sleep homeostasis.

Mallard et al. study the often overlooked X-chromosome’s influences on the human brain. They find that X-chromosome influences on cortical surface area are sex biased and concentrated in specific cortical systems.

The skull dura contains B cells and B lineage precursors under homeostatic conditions. These cells are long-term tissue resident and mature upon neuroinflammation. This identifies the dura as a site of B cell residence and potentially development.

In the nucleus, specific stretches of DNA are ‘anchored’ to distinct membrane-less compartments that harbor gene regulatory function. Using GO-CaRT, the authors discovered unique aspects of genome architecture in neural precursors in vivo, providing new insights into brain development and disease.

Lee et al. show that in male Shank3-mutant mice, mPFC neurons are impaired in encoding of social agency. Shank3 reexpression in mPFC restored this ability in real time, and this was accompanied by rescue of normal social behavior.

By recording and manipulating neural activity in rats performing a skilled behavior, the authors show that the basal ganglia control the detailed kinematics of learned skills and can do so independently of the motor cortex.

Shamash et al. examine how mice learn to get past an obstacle blocking their path to a goal. They found that mice instinctively adopt a subgoal memory strategy, which combines elements from both habitual learning and the cognitive map theory.

The authors utilize information theory to show that four of the output pathways in the primate retina encode predictive information about visual motion. They further show the nonlinear circuit mechanisms that contribute to this computation.

Cognitive maps are theorized to enable generalizing experiences in new situations. Park et al. show that non-spatial experiences sampled piecemeal are integrated into a two-dimensional cognitive map of social hierarchy, and a grid code is used for novel inferences.

Yang et al. generated a genomic atlas of protein levels in brain, cerebrospinal fluid and plasma and used human genetics approaches to identify proteins implicated in neurological diseases as well as druggable targets.

The authors construct brain-wide coexpression networks to characterize regional versus global features, determine if disease susceptibility maps onto regional or brain-wide processes and assess how these networks capture genetic models of disease risk.

Rupprecht et al. compiled a large database of simultaneous electrophysiological and calcium recordings from the same neurons. An algorithm (termed CASCADE) trained with this ground truth enables reliable spike inference without the need to tune parameters.