Rutter and Benninger discuss the role of putative controlling beta-cell populations in the context of intra-islet connectivity, how such a cellular hierarchy might be achieved and its potential role in islet physiology and diabetes.

NextBrain is an open source, probabilistic atlas of the entire human brain, assembled using artificial-intelligence-enabled registration and segmentation methods to reconstruct the multimodal serial h...

The authors use spatial and single-cell transcriptomics to examine spatial dynamics during early human cardiogenesis, yielding insights into the development of the cardiac pacemaker-conduction system,...

Buron et al. show that oxytocin enhances heart rate variability linked to breathing during recovery from stress. This calming and cardio-protective effect is produced through a hypothalamus–brainstem ...

Brain clearance mechanisms are challenging to visualize in humans. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the authors noninvasively mapped cerebrospinal fluid motion across the brain, showing region-specif...

Clustering and nesting (C&N) arise in many preclinical studies, such as when animals are group-housed or share litters, or in cell culture. Ignoring C&N undermines the validity of analyses. Here, we explain how C&N arise, as well as valid designs and analyses.

Heartbeat sound is one of the first rhythmic stimuli encountered by the developing human brain, yet its biological role has remained unexplored. Here we show that heartbeat sound promotes structural a...

Pathway analysis, originally developed for gene expression data, has been adapted for metabolomics. However, owing to the unique characteristics and constraints of metabolites compared with genes, pathway analysis in metabolomics often yields misleading or nonsensical results.

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 ...

Patient-specific, human-based cellular models integrating a biomimetic blood–brain barrier, immune, and myelinated neuron components are critically...

Multi-Region Brain Organoids combine cerebral, mid/hindbrain, and endothelial components into an advanced 3D model capturing 80% of fetal brain cellular diversity. This platform reveals essential end....

Uridine is a pyrimidine nucleoside composed of an uracil base and a ribose sugar. In cells, uridine is predominantly present in RNA (as uridine monophosphate, UMP). Uridine can be produced through de ...

Severe pneumonia is predominantly caused by cytokine storms in the lung, but how this process is controlled remains unclear. Li et al. find that severe pneumonia activates central amygdala GABAergic neurons, which triggers a sympathetic nerve-pulmonary interstitial macrophage interaction that amplifies lung inflammation. Blocking this pathway reduces harmful inflammation and cytokine storms, offering a promising therapeutic target for severe pneumonia.

Locus ceruleus (LC)–derived norepinephrine (NE) drives network and behavioral adaptations to environmental saliencies by reconfiguring circuit functional connectivity, but the underlying synapse-level...

A distinct population of CD4 T cells resides in specific regions of the steady-state brain, and these T cells are programmed in the periphery by the microbiome to coordinate adaptive behaviour.

Nature Neuroscience - The choroid plexus (ChP) provides molecular cues for brain development. However, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. This study identifies an apocrine secretion mechanism...

In this review, Prinz and Frosch describe how the central nervous system is partitioned into distinct immune niches, each hosting unique myeloid cell populations that shape disease outcomes. They highlight novel cellular and molecular strategies to modulate these populations in a compartment-specific manner and discuss the challenges in translating these approaches from animal models to clinical practice.

Cachexia, a severe wasting syndrome associated with inflammatory conditions, often leads to multiorgan failure and death. Patients with cachexia experience extreme fatigue, apathy, and clinical depres...

Han et al. report the existence of neural stem cells (NSCs) outside the central nervous system and show that these peripheral NSCs display features similar to brain NSCs, including the ability to diff...

Krapić, Kavazović and colleagues dissect the mechanism by which natural killer cells drive adipose tissue remodelling during viral infection, thus fuelling antiviral immune responses.