Nature Communications - Control over pain changes how intense it is perceived. Here, the authors show that this effect results from increased expectation precision with control, which changes...

Most behaviors involve neural dynamics in high-dimensional activity spaces. A common approach is to extract dimensions that capture task-related variability, such as those separating stimuli or choice...

Neural activity is often analyzed with respect to external referents, such as the onset of a sensory stimulus or an overt motor action. Simultaneous recordings allow referencing neurons’ activity to e...

Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...

Although in vitro neuronal models are accessible and versatile systems for functional electrophysiological studies, the spontaneous and random formation of neural circuits often compromises the structural control and reproducibility. Here, we introduce a robust method for engineering human neuronal networks in vitro with single-cell precision and reproducibility. Our integrated platform combines direct laser-written microstructure templates and soft lithography-based fabrication of microscaffolds with functional multielectrode array recordings. This system enables high-throughput production of diverse circuit designs and allows for the exact placement of neurons within confined microenvironments. The system enables precise recording of spontaneous neuronal activity, as well as electrical and optogenetic stimulations. Using this approach, we constructed reproducible, bottom-up neuronal circuits composed of a defined number of human neurons. As a proof of principle, we employed these circuits to investigate ephaptic coupling, which refers to the modulation of neuronal activity by endogenous electric fields. Although it is believed to play a role in neural computations and cardiac conduction and is associated with epilepsy and arrhythmia, its mechanisms are unclear due to limitations in experimental models, both in vivo and in vitro. By controlling axonal proximity within microchannels and the number of neurons in the engineered circuits, we can quantify ephaptic coupling at different strengths, which validates theoretical predictions, including reduced action potential velocity, increased activity synchronization, and lower stimulation thresholds. Furthermore, the platform has broad potential for studying synaptic and nonsynaptic interactions, myelination processes, advancing disease modeling, and fundamental neuroscience research.

The authors review evidence that the primary function of the brain, supported by distributed neural systems, is the predictive regulation of physiology (i.e., allostasis). An example from Alzheimer’s ...

Neuropsychopharmacology - Dorsomedial striatal neuroinflammation causes excessive goal-directed action control by disrupting astrocyte function

Until recently, it has been possible to examine activity in the brain globally through regional averaging or locally at cellular resolution. These studies characterized regions as functionally homogen...

Laamerad et al. use reversible inactivation of primate area V4 to examine how the brain learns new perceptual tasks. The results reveal an inductive bias for sensory readouts that are easy to learn, e...

The complex mechanics of the arm make the neural control of reaching inherently posture dependent. Because previous reaching studies confound reach direction with final posture, it remains unknown how...

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

We consider emergence from the perspective of dynamics: states of a system evolving with time. We focus on the role of a decomposition of wholes into parts, and attempt to characterize relationships b...