How positive and negative affective stimuli interact in the brain to influence behavioral outcomes remains poorly understood. Here, we show that re...

Background United States drug policy is primarily based on the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and largely contradicts scientific evidence about how to mitigate drugs’ harms. Expert consensus on dru...

Rationale Fear memories are essential for survival, but their inappropriate expression can contribute to anxiety disorders, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorders that can present differently be...

Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound with potential antidepressant effects. Although it has long been used by humans, primarily fo…

YouTube video by Andrew Perfors

The neural mechanisms underlying the diversity of hippocampal replay dynamics remain unclear. Here, using computational modelling, the authors show that modulation of firing-rate adaptation accounts f...

The authors mapped spontaneous and choice activity across mouse prefrontal cortex. The activity maps aligned with intrinsic connectivity rather than anatomical subregions, suggesting that connectivity...

Neuropsychopharmacology - The psychoactive cannabinoid THC inhibits peripheral nociceptors by targeting NaV1.7 and NaV1.8 nociceptive sodium channels

If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

Multi area RNN models fitted to in-vivo cortical activity predict behavioral changes induced by optogenetic perturbations, if biologically informed connectivity constraints on the optogenetically targeted inhibitory neurons are applied.

Psychotherapies have been found effective in the treatment of most mental disorders. However, substantial improvements are still much needed, and many innovations of therapies are currently being dev...

Serendipity in psychiatric discoveries: historical lessons and future imperatives for clinical observation

Exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is efficacious for treating patients with multiple traumatic events. However, individuals with PTSD with exposure to multiple traumatic eve...

Pain-related aversion is an affective-motivational state driven by sensory experience that promotes learning and recruits widespread cortical networks, yet how distinct cingulate subregions contribute to its adaptive utility remains poorly understood. Here we used longitudinal one-photon calcium imaging in mice to compare dynamics in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) across repeated unsignaled foot-shocks and fear conditioning and extinction paradigm. Both regions contained relatively stable ensembles that responded robustly to shocks, indicating shared encoding of acute nociceptive events. However, only the RSC flexibly re-organized its population activity when shocks were preceded by predictive cues. These anticipatory dynamics in the RSC predicted the rate of fear learning across individuals and subsequent extinction. By contrast, the ACC maintained shock-responsive ensembles with limited cue modulation. Instead, its dynamics encoded decisions to freeze, aligning with its role in encoding ongoing nociception and driving immediate defensive behavior. Together, these results reveal a division of labor in which the ACC emphasizes ongoing nociceptive processing, while the RSC transforms sensory signals into predictive codes that shape learning and memory. This specialization highlights how distributed cortical computations cooperate to generate the adaptive value of aversion. More broadly, our findings suggest that these regions assume complementary roles to address immediate sensory-motivational responses while flexibly reconfiguring to support long-term behavioral adaptation. Significance statement Pain engages widespread cortical circuits, yet how distinct cingulate subregions collaborate to shape its experience and utility remains unknown. Using longitudinal calcium imaging in mice, we demonstrate that both the anterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortex contain stable shock-responsive ensembles, but only the retrosplenial cortex flexibly remodels its activity when shocks are predicted by cues. These anticipatory dynamics not only predict fear learning but influence extinction. Our findings uncover a division of labor in which the anterior cingulate encodes ongoing nociception and immediate defensive actions, while the retrosplenial cortex transforms these signals into temporally structured representations that support learning and memory. This work highlights how specialized cortical computations interact to generate the adaptive value of pain. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. NIGMS, DP2GM140923 NINDS, F31NS143421

Covalent fluorescent probes have emerged as versatile chemical tools to visualise active enzymes in complex biological systems. When tailored for specific applications, ranging from activity-based pr...

Neuropsychopharmacology - Choreographing time: toward therapy-aligned entactogens for complex PTSD

Neuropsychopharmacology - Psychedelic therapeutics in psychiatric conditions