Maladaptive central autonomic remodelling that occurs in response to heart failure and hypertension drives sympathetic overactivity and cardiac dysfunction. In this Review, van Weperen and Vaseghi discuss the neural, glial and molecular mechanisms underlying these changes, as well as emerging neuromodulatory strategies aimed at restoring autonomic balance.

Neural decoding remains constrained by methods that miss the brain’s chemical signalling dimension. In this Review, Kim and Park discuss hybrid and transformative neurochemical interfaces that provide real-time access to the brain’s dynamic molecular activity.

In this Journal Club, Erfan Nozari discusses work detailing a simple, transparent algorithm for iEEG mapping of seizure onset zones and the emergent property of neural fragility at its core.

Connectomics has delivered on its promise to map neuronal circuits at scale and at synaptic resolution. In this Review, Helmstaedter describes recent methodological achievements and remaining challenges in synaptic-resolution connectomics while synthesizing expanding connectomic mapping ambitions that include resolving local circuits of larger brains and screening of connectomes.

In this Journal Club, Arjen Boender describes a 2017 study that showed that diffusible peptidergic signals coordinate behaviour in Trichoplax adhaerens, a tiny marine animal that lacks a nervous system.

A single dose of psilocybin is shown here to induce neural plasticity in specific large-scale networks in the mouse.

To flexibly perform multiple tasks, non-human primates compose appropriate behavioural responses by sharing subspaces of neural activity from which representations of task-related sensory, motor and cognitive information can be reused.

A new study shows that two variants of apolipoprotein E that offer some protection against Alzheimer disease extract oxidized phospholipids from neurons via the ABCA7 transporter, supporting neuronal function.

Despite advances in HIV-1 treatment, half of all people living with HIV-1 experience HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). Most of our understanding of HAND neuropathogenesis comes from studies of individuals with HIV-1 subtype B, which is responsible for a small proportion of global HIV-1 infections. By contrast, HIV-1 subtype C, which predominates in sub-Saharan Africa, affects many more people but remains poorly characterized, limiting our understanding of HAND at a global level.

Examination of human brain tissue infiltrated by gliomas of different clinical grades indicates that heightened neuron–glioma synapse activity drives increased proliferation in high-grade gliomas.