Sun et al. report human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome in 33,250 individuals, which highlights critical growth milestones and distinct maturation patterns and offers a normative reference for development, aging and diseases.

Naturalistic communication is an aim for neuroprostheses. Here the authors present a neuroprosthesis that restores the voice of a paralyzed person simultaneously with their speaking attempts, enabling naturalistic communication.

Researchers developed DELTA, a method for brain-wide measurement of synaptic protein turnover with single-synapse resolution, providing a powerful tool to localize and study mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity and learning.

Kim and coworkers describe a technique, EPSILON, to map AMPA receptor exocytosis, a proxy for synaptic plasticity, in mice. The authors demonstrated a correlation between AMPA receptor exocytosis and cFos expression during a fear conditioning experiment.

This study uses single-cell sequencing to investigate the diversification of cortical cell types during evolution. Comparisons across brain regions and species identify molecular signatures of ancestral cell types in the mammalian olfactory cortex.

Sun et al. report human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome in 33,250 individuals, which highlights critical growth milestones and distinct maturation patterns and offers a normative reference for development, aging and diseases.

The authors uncover slow, facilitating inhibitory connections between serotonin neurons in the dorsal raphe, refuting autoinhibition theories. This recurrence drives winner-take-all effects and nonlinear processing of threat-related inputs.

Through multiday imaging and acute whole-cell recordings in behaving mice, Qian, Li and Magee provide insight into place field formation in general and specifically how the hippocampus adaptively remaps for flexible goal-directed navigation.

Naturalistic communication is an aim for neuroprostheses. Here the authors present a neuroprosthesis that restores the voice of a paralyzed person simultaneously with their speaking attempts, enabling naturalistic communication.

Kim and coworkers describe a technique, EPSILON, to map AMPA receptor exocytosis, a proxy for synaptic plasticity, in mice. The authors demonstrated a correlation between AMPA receptor exocytosis and cFos expression during a fear conditioning experiment.

The nervous system can drive the initiation, growth, spread, and therapy resistance of cancer, and cancer can manipulate the nervous system in ways that further support disease progression. Tumors growing within the brain or elsewhere in the body connect with neuronal networks in circuit-specific manners, via neuron-to-cancer synaptic interactions and paracrine crosstalk. Moreover, neural factors govern critical components of the tumor environment, such as the immune system, and cancer can use neural mechanisms in a malignant cell-intrinsic manner. Here we provide a personal view on the burgeoning field of cancer neuroscience and highlight the need to approach cancer research from a neuroscience perspective — together with neuroscientists.

The scientific study of consciousness was sanctioned as an orthodox field of study only three decades ago. Since then, a variety of prominent theories have flourished, including integrated information theory, which has been recently accused of being pseudoscience by more than 100 academics. Here we critically assess this charge and offer thoughts to elevate the clash into positive lessons for our field.

Theories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open debate. Here we discuss the case and argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.