Nature Neuroscience

Noninvasive decoding of typed sentences from human brain activity

Jarod Lévy — 2026-06-29

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 29 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02303-2

Here the authors introduce Brain2Qwerty, a deep learning model that decodes typed sentences from non-invasive brain activity with character error rate down to 18%. This opens a pathway for non-invasive communication neuroprostheses.

Mitochondrial stress response drives microglial senescence

Luca Peruzzotti-Jametti — 2026-06-26

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02264-6

The mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) drives microglial senescence and disrupts essential glia–neuron communication. By triggering lipid droplet accumulation and dysregulating the S-adenosylmethionine–polyamine axis, UPRmt fuels the senescence-associated secretory pathway, impairs synaptic pruning and accelerates misfolded protein pathology. In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Perez et al. identify UPRmt as a primary driver of metabolic vulnerability in human microglia.

Interpretable abstractions of artificial neural networks predict behavior and neural activity during human information gathering

Simone D’Ambrogio — 2026-06-26

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02342-9

D’Ambrogio et al. combine deep learning and symbolic regression to report an interpretable equation of how humans value information. The equation predicts choices and neural activity in anterior insula, cingulate cortex and midbrain nuclei.

Conditioned accumbal dopamine transients forecast individual preference for drug versus natural rewards and compulsive behavior

Vincent Pascoli — 2026-06-26

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02331-y

Pascoli et al. show that nucleus accumbens dopamine transients evoked by reward-predictive cues encode subjective reward value in mice, predicting individual preference for drugs over natural rewards and forecasting vulnerability to compulsive drug-seeking behavior.

The mitochondrial unfolded protein response in human microglia disrupts neuronal–glial communication and promotes senescence

Maria Jose Perez J — 2026-06-26

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02320-1

Mitochondrial proteotoxic stress rewires methionine and lipid metabolism in human microglia, driving cellular senescence and disrupting neuronal–glial communication, revealing a mechanism linking mitochondrial dysfunction to brain aging and neurodegeneration.

Striatal control of amygdalar acetylcholine release during salience-associated processing

Aixiao Chen — 2026-06-26

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02353-6

Amygdalar acetylcholine signals dynamically represent salience. Chen et al. show that striatal D1 and D2 neurons oppositely control these signals via basal forebrain cholinergic pathways to shape salience-associated learning.

DBS: from neuromodulation to neuroremodelling

Valentina Lind — 2026-06-25

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 25 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02347-4

Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) treats movement and neuropsychiatric disorders through mechanisms that remain unclear. Two studies that combine longitudinal neuroimaging, stimulation experiments and tissue-level analysis show that the effects of DBS evolve in space and time, demonstrating acute effects on network activity as well as providing insights into chronic effects that reshape the networks it engages.

Learning shapes neural geometry in the primate prefrontal cortex

Michał J. Wójcik — 2026-06-25

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 25 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02333-w

Learning transforms prefrontal cortex activity from flexible, high-dimensional representations into compact, task-relevant and abstract codes, enabling efficient generalization of learned rules to new stimuli and contexts.