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Featured Research

Updated July 9, 2025

Research Spotlight

Most Discussed

 Research Spotlight

Evidence That Respiratory Phase May Modulate Task-Related Neural Representations of Visual Stimuli

Lisa Stetza, Lena Hehemann, and Christoph Kayser

How we breathe can profoundly shape how good or swift we perform in cognitive tasks. Stetza and colleagues investigate this body-brain interaction using an emotion discrimination task. Using EEG recordings in humans they show that respiration modulates task-specific neurophysiological processes in a manner that is predictive of respiration-related behavioural benefits. This suggests how structured respiration may specifically enhance cognitive functions.

Single Neuron Contributions to the Auditory Brainstem EEG

Paula T. Kuokkanen, Ira Kraemer, Christine Köppl, Catherine E. Carr, and Richard Kempter

Sound onset activates tens of thousands of neurons in the auditory brainstem in a fast cascade. Their compound multi-peaked signal waveform can be recorded at the scalp, and is used to diagnose hearing loss in newborns, but is not fully understood. Kuokkanen and colleagues isolated scalp signals from single neurons in the first processing stage of the barn owl auditory pathway, finding that single neurons' contributions to the scalp signal were unexpectedly large, and time-locked to the second peak. These findings contribute to better understanding of scalp signals and advance differentiating diagnoses.

Infralimbic Projections to the Substantia Innominata–Ventral Pallidum Constrain Defensive Behavior during Extinction Learning

Carolina Fernandes-Henriques, Yuval Guetta, Mia G. Sclar, Rebecca Zhang, Yuka Miura, Katherine R. Surrence, Allyson K. Friedman, and Ekaterina Likhtik

Fernandes-Henriques, Guetta, Sclar, and colleagues show that the pathway from the prefrontal cortex to the basal forebrain becomes active during fear extinction learning, when it constrains fear expression. The authors also demonstrate the specificity of this pathway and contrast it with activity in the prefrontal-amygdala pathway, which is more active during extinction memory recall than in learning. This opens a new avenue for understanding prefrontal function in fear suppression, and for improving emotion regulation in patients suffering from stress- and anxiety disorders, who typically have trouble decreasing fear responses. 

Stimulus Repetition Induces a Two-Stage Learning Process in the Primary Visual Cortex

Lihan Cui, Ke Bo, Changhao Xiong, Yujun Chen, Andreas Keil, and Mingzhou Ding

When a visual stimulus is presented again and again, the brain’s response to the stimulus changes with repetition. The underlying neural mechanisms are not clear. In this work, Cui and colleagues tested two models of repetition learning: the fatigue model and the sharpening model. They found a two-stage learning process in the primary visual cortex: the initial stage of repetition suppression characterized by the fatigue mechanism is followed by a longer-term learning stage characterized by the sharpening mechanism.

Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Individual Variability in Rat Helping Behavior: A Role for Social Affiliation and Oxytocin Receptors

Reut Hazani, Jocelyn M. Breton, Estherina Trachtenberg, Keren Ruzal, Bar Shvalbo, Ben Kantor, Adva Maman, Einat Bigelman, Steve Cole, Aron Weller, and Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal

Why are some people more helpful than others? Bartal and colleagues used rats to explore why some individuals may be more receptive to the distress of others and how this information leads to helpful behavior. During a task the researchers previously developed, they observed the behaviors and brain activity of helpful rats compared to less helpful rats. In this task that probes helping behavior, rats are given the option to release a distressed peer trapped in a restrainer. Rats were more likely to come to the aid of others that they had previous positive social interactions with. These helpful rats had increased activity in brain regions associated with empathy and motivation compared to less helpful rats. The researchers also observed that helper rats had increased oxytocin receptor expression in a brain region that drives motivation compared to the less helpful rats. According to the authors, this could mean that caring for others, more than relating to others’ distresses, contributes to helpfulness. When oxytocin signaling was inhibited, rats were less friendly with others, suggesting oxytocin may support helping by making rats feel attachment to others. “We appear to live in an increasingly polarized society where there is a gap in empathy towards others. This work helps us understand prosocial, or helpful, acts better. We see others in distress all the time but tend to help only certain individuals. The similarity between human and rat brains helps us understand the way our brain mediates prosocial decisions,” says Bartel. 

 Most-Discussed Research Published in June

Below are five Early Release articles that generated the most online discussion in June 2025, as measured by Altmetric. Altmetric data is available for all articles published in JNeurosci on the Info & Metrics tab. Learn more about how the Altmetric score is calculated.

 

Bitter Sensing Protects Drosophila from Developing Experience-Dependent Cocaine Consumption Preference

Travis J. Philyaw, Iris Titos, Pearl N. Cummins-Beebee, Aylin R. Rodan, and Adrian Rothenfluh

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is a highly heritable condition for which there are no effective treatments. Testing the many human genetic variants linked to CUD requires a cost-effective, genetically tractable model. Here, we show that bitter-sensing neurons prevent cocaine self-administration in Drosophila. Furthermore, we demonstrate that disrupting Drosophila bitter perception enables a model for experience-dependent cocaine preference. Our findings underscore the potential of Drosophila as a crucial tool for identifying the genetic mechanisms underlying CUD, aiding in the discovery of new therapeutic targets, and contributing to the development of effective treatments for this highly heritable disease.

 

Role of Hypothalamic CRH Neurons in Regulating the Impact of Stress on Memory and Sleep

Alyssa Wiest, John J. Maurer, Kevin T. Beier, Franz Weber, and Shinjae Chung

Stress significantly affects both sleep and memory, with spatial memory being particularly vulnerable. In this study, we combine acute restraint stress with optogenetic manipulations and a spatial object recognition task to investigate how corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (CRHPVN), and their projections to the lateral hypothalamus (LH), influence memory performance and sleep–wake states following stress. Our findings reveal that activating CRHPVN neurons impairs memory performance and increases wakefulness, whereas inhibiting CRHPVN neurons during stress improves memory and sleep. Inhibiting CRHPVN neuronal projections to the LH similarly improves memory performance and sleep. This work highlights the role of CRHPVN neurons and their projections to the LH in modulating stress-induced alterations in memory and sleep–wake states.

 

Fine-tuning the details: post-encoding music differentially impacts general and detailed memory

Kayla Clark and Stephanie L. Leal

Music may be a powerful tool for modulating memory and mood, offering therapeutic potential for disorders like Alzheimer’s and depression. We found that individual differences in emotional arousal following music exposure influenced both general memory and detailed memory performance. Compared to controls, music specifically impacted memory for details, highlighting its potential to target specific memory aspects. These findings suggest that music interventions may not uniformly enhance memory, emphasizing the need for personalized approaches in treating memory and mood impairments.

 

EEG correlates of active removal from working memory

Jiangang Shan and Bradley R. Postle

The removal of no-longer-relevant information from working memory is critical for the flexible control of behavior. However, to our knowledge, the only explicit accounts of this operation describe the simple withdrawal of attention from that information (i.e., “passive removal”). Here, with measurements of behavior and electroencephalography (EEG), we provide evidence for a specific mechanism for the active removal of information from WM–hijacked adaptation–via the top-down triggering of an adaptation-like down-regulation of gain of the perceptual circuits tuned to the to-be-removed information. These results may have implications for disorders of mental health, including rumination, intrusion of negative thoughts, and hallucination.

 

Age-related Increase in Locus Coeruleus Activity and Connectivity with Prefrontal Cortex during Ambiguity Processing

Arjun Dave, Shuer Ye, Leona Rahel Bätz, Xiaqing Lan, Heidi I.L. Jacobs, and Maryam Ziaei

Understanding how the brain adapts to cognitive and emotional demands with age is key to promoting healthy aging. This study examined whether the locus coeruleus (LC), a brain region critical for regulating attention and arousal, undergoes adaptive changes with age, especially during emotional ambiguity task. Using ultra-high-field imaging, we explored younger and older adults recognize facial expressions with varying ambiguity levels. Our findings indicated that compared to young, older adults showed heightened LC activity and LC-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) connectivity when processing absolute-ambiguous facial expressions, with enhanced connectivity linked to improved mental well-being. These results suggest higher LC activity supports cognitive demands of ambiguity processing with LC-dlPFC connectivity promoting emotional well-being and resilience, offering insights into mechanisms underlying healthy aging.

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