Investigating Mechanoreceptors in Rodent Skin Laura Medlock, Dhekra Al-Basha, Adel Halawa, Christopher Dedek, Stephanie Ratte, and Steven Prescott (see article e1252242024) Scientists have advanced our understanding of somatosensory coding by investigating the whisker system in rodents. But somatosensory coding in humans and nonhuman primates has been explored mostly in nonhairy (glabrous) skin, which likely operates differently than whiskers. Whether somatosensory coding in rodent skin bears similarity to that of nonhuman primates is a critical knowledge gap that …

How Astrocytes Promote Hippocampal Inhibitory Circuit Development Samantha Sutley-Koury, Christopher Taitano-Johnson, Anna Kulinich, Nadia Farooq, Victoria Wagner et al. (see article e0154242024) Epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders are characterized by hyperactive neurons. A known mechanism for neuronal hyperactivity is impaired inhibitory synapse development, which reduces the inhibition of excitatory neurons to drive their hyperactivity. Sutley-Koury et al. explored a mechanism underlying the development of inhibitory synapses in the mouse hippocampus that may be impaired in epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders. The authors previously discovered that astrocytic …

Have you ever experienced the awakening presence of a loved one with dementia as they sing a familiar song? Or watched, in awe, as the tremors of a person with Parkinson’s disease stop and the person’s gait improves as they dance? Have you wondered why, exactly, you feel so moved when you hear a piece of music? Or why digging in a garden or walking through a beautiful natural vista brings a sense of calm? Or why drawing, coloring, or doodling for just a few minutes can help relieve anxiety and stress? Have you felt the physiologically calming effects of a poem read on a day when you were inconsolable? In writing the book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (Magsamen and Ross, 2023), my coauthor Ivy Ross, chief design officer of consumer devices for Google, and I sought to illuminate the power of the arts and aesthetic experiences. We wove together the emerging science of neuroaesthetics to illustrate how creative expression advances our health, well-being, and learning, and ho

The capabilities of the human ear are remarkable. We can normally detect acoustic stimuli down to a threshold sound-pressure level of 0 dB (decibels) at the entrance to the external ear, which elicits eardrum vibrations in the picometer range. From this threshold up to the onset of pain, 120 dB, our ears can encompass sounds that differ in power by a trillionfold. The comprehension of speech and enjoyment of music result from our ability to distinguish between tones that differ in frequency by only 0.2%. All these capabilities vanish upon damage to the ear’s receptors, the mechanoreceptive sensory hair cells. Each cochlea, the auditory organ of the inner ear, contains some 16,000 such cells that are frequency-tuned between ∼20 Hz (cycles per second) and 20,000 Hz. Remarkably enough, hair cells do not simply capture sound energy: they can also exhibit an active process whereby sound signals are amplified, tuned, and scaled. This article describes the active process in detail and offers

A New Mouse Line for Identifying and Targeting Pericytes Xingying Guo, Shangzhou Xia, Tenghuan Ge, Yangtao Lin, Shirley Hu et al. (see article e0727242024) Pericytes are essential for the integrity of the blood–brain barrier. However, because pericytes are broadly expressed in the body and have genetic overlap with other cell types, researchers have struggled to explore the distinct role of central nervous system (CNS) pericytes in health and disease. Guo and colleagues overcame this hurdle in mice by developing a genetic mouse …