In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

Many animals rely on internal representations of continuous variables such as head direction to guide behavior. Noorman et al. show how such representations can be accurately maintained in small neural networks, countering decades of theoretical intuition.

Siddiqi et al. identified lesion locations that reduced probability of PTSD. These were connected to a brain circuit in which increased connectivity was associated with PTSD, thus revealing a PTSD target circuit for therapeutic brain stimulation.

The authors review current knowledge of the molecular identity and functions of the dura, arachnoid and pial layers of meninges and controversial aspects of meningeal biology that deserve further study to resolve ongoing debates in the field.

Integration of postmortem molecular and dendritic spine morphological measurements enables the detection of microscale molecules associated with person-to-person variability in macroscale brain connectivity estimated from antemortem neuroimaging.

Hansen et al. used in vivo functional imaging of the human brainstem and cortex to demonstrate how the brainstem shapes cortical functional architecture, including oscillatory dynamics, cognitive specialization and hierarchical organization.

Rastermap is an analysis method for exploring dynamical and spatial relationships among hundreds to hundreds of thousands of neurons. The algorithm uses a fast optimization technique to discover complex neural patterns, such as sequences.

Profiling >200,000 live human microglia from 74 donors across neurological diseases reveals 12 subtypes of microglia that were validated in situ. Camptothecin is also identified as a compound reducing disease-enriched microglial subsets.

The hippocampal dorsal CA2 enables the recognition of novel conspecifics. Kassraian et al. show that it is also required for discriminating safety- versus threat-associated conspecifics and that its disruption gives rise to generalized social avoidance.

The affected cellular populations during Alzheimer’s disease progression remain understudied. Here the authors use a cohort of 84 donors, quantitative neuropathology and multimodal datasets from the BRAIN Initiative. Their pseudoprogression analysis revealed two disease phases.

Ernest Arenas, Professor at the Karolinska Institutet, passed away on 15 September 2024 at the age of 62 in Stockholm, Sweden. Ernest made unique contributions to the field of Parkinson’s disease research, with a strong commitment to developing improved treatment strategies through cell replacement therapy.

Undergraduate research programs improve career outcomes for historically marginalized students in the US, but low retention rates in postgraduate research persist. As graduate students and postdocs, we present a combination of trainee-informed approaches for tailoring summer research programs to these students’ needs and share key materials to facilitate adoption of these approaches at other institutions.