Pascoli et al. show that nucleus accumbens dopamine transients evoked by reward-predictive cues encode subjective reward value in mice, predicting individual preference for drugs over natural rewards and forecasting vulnerability to compulsive drug-seeking behavior.

Erucamide, a fatty acid amide reduced in degenerating retinas, activates myeloid cells via TMEM19 to release neurotrophic and angiogenic factors, rescuing photoreceptors and vasculature in mouse models of retinal degeneration.

Here the authors introduce Brain2Qwerty, a deep learning model that decodes typed sentences from non-invasive brain activity with character error rate down to 18%. This opens a pathway for non-invasive communication neuroprostheses.

Mitochondrial proteotoxic stress rewires methionine and lipid metabolism in human microglia, driving cellular senescence and disrupting neuronal–glial communication, revealing a mechanism linking mitochondrial dysfunction to brain aging and neurodegeneration.

The authors show that cerebral venous blood flow and meningeal lymphatics co-regulate intracranial pressure and brain clearance in mice and humans. This finding supports idiopathic intracranial hypertension as a cerebral venous disorder.

Yu, Zhang et al. show that repeated exposure to the psychedelic drug 25C-NBOMe in adolescent rats, but not in adult rats, reduces willingness to engaged in food resource competition in adulthood, due to reduced theta synchrony between ventral hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex.

Visualizing microglia and blood vessels in postnatal mouse cortex reveals that microglia contact and prune vessels, which is mediated by PD-L1–PD-1 signaling.

In people with narcolepsy, cataplexy is often triggered by strong emotions in social situations. Mahoney et al. show that such cataplexy is mediated by oxytocin-responsive neurons in the amygdala that target brainstem regions regulating motor tone.

This study establishes a region-matched framework for comparing single-neuron dendritic morphology in human and mouse cortex, revealing more compact local dendrites and stronger lobe-level morphological specialization in humans.

Compagnion et al. show that TDP-43 loss in microglia causes myelin defects, oligodendrocyte precursor cell imbalance and motor deficits in mice. They identify TDP-43 as a regulator of the TREM2-DAP12 signaling, through the control of Tyrobp mis-splicing.

The 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposed a structural dependency that the neuroimaging community has rarely discussed openly.