Mizrachi et al. show that directing attention to bodily sensations, rather than away, promotes more regulated acute inflammatory responses in healthy volunteers, revealing sensory and vagal pathways l...

The first population-level atlas of the human vagus nerve has arrived. But a map of the wiring does not tell you what the wires are saying -- on va...

Thalamocortical projections shape the functional regionalization and parallel sensory computations across the mammalian cortex. However, the principles of thalamocortical computations in non-mammalian...

Tau pathology spreads cell to cell, but the mechanisms of intercellular tau transmission remain unclear. We find that the neuronal gene Arc is critica…

Throughout the mammalian cortex, populations of neurons must work together to enact behaviors. While population recordings in motor cortex have revealed many aspects of when neurons fire during behavi...

During learning, neural circuits reorganize to encode new information and adapt behavioral responses. Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaM…

In a nonhuman primate model, Fujimoto et al. show that deep brain stimulation promotes white matter remodeling and reorganizes brain-wide functional networks, detailing a mechanism through which this ...

Brain activity is highly regulated by GABAergic activity, which can suppress neuronal excitability and synaptic integration. Tonic GABAergic conductan…

The rodent accessory olfactory system (AOS) detects chemosignals emitted by conspecifics and other species to support beneficial behaviors. Peripheral vomeronasal sensory neurons (VSNs), the AOS' chemical sensors, detect fecal bile acids in patterns that have unknown significance to the animal. We used a combination of mass spectrometry and VSN calcium imaging to investigate the AOS' capacity to use bile acid information to discriminate between fecal samples from captive reptiles and mice with varying gut microbiome states. Mass spectrometry analysis revealed bile acid patterns that distinguished biologically relevant samples from one another, representing theoretical discrimination axes. We measured VSN response patterns to bile acid stimuli aligned with theoretical discrimination axes. We found that VSNs perform stimulus "whitening" via an inverse relationship between natural bile acid abundance and population response magnitude. VSNs showed maximum sensitivity to taurine-conjugated bile acids, which have high theoretical discriminatory value, but were found at low natural abundance levels. Individual taurine-conjugated bile acids drove threat assessment behavior when added to familiar mouse fecal extracts, suggesting high behavioral significance. Finally, we analyzed the degree to which the AOS utilizes the theoretical information about species, diet, and gut microbiome status from bile acids. We found that VSN tuning patterns align with theoretical axes for discriminating reptilian predators from vegetarians, and between mice with different gut microbiome states. VSN tuning was especially well-aligned with the information available about conspecific gut microbiome status. These results show that AOS bile acid chemosensation supports discrimination of multiple biologically relevant states. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Institutes of Health, R01DC017985, R56DC015784, R01DC021213

PinkyCaMP is a red genetically encoded calcium indicator with improved brightness and photostability. Derived from mScarlet, it does not exhibit photoswitching upon blue light illumination and is ther...

The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

In this study, the authors present that expected-sound omissions in mouse auditory cortex evoked distinct, time-locked activity in layers 1–4 of the Temporal Association Area, suggesting a higher-orde...

Gut-brain vagal signals gate dopamine ensembles, reshaping reward and motivation beyond a brain-centric view.

A vagal reflex to blood volume changes in the heart involves PIEZO2 and helps to stabilize blood pressure in an upright posture and after blood loss.

Bruijns et al. present a modeling tool that enables the tracking of learning dynamics across subjects to reveal how behaviors emerge and adapt. Applying the tool to a decision-making task in mice unco...

Animals must align intestinal plasticity and feeding with reproductive state, yet the checkpoint that gates these adaptations is unknown. Here we show that an ovary-to-enteric-neuron axis gates the on...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

The anterior cingulate cortex encodes affective pain behaviours modulated by opioids; targeting opioid-sensitive neurons through a new chemogenetic gene therapy replicates the analgesic effects of mor...

Stress profoundly impacts systemic metabolism, yet the central circuits linking stress responses to peripheral metabolic regulation remain poorly defined. Here, we identify the preBötzinger complex (p...

Enlightening the brain