🧠 Category

neuroscience

1554 papers

Neuroscience explores the intricate machinery of the brain and nervous system, seeking to understand how we think, feel, and move. From the microscopic dance of individual neurons to the complex networks that shape our memories and behaviors, this field peels back the layers of our biological selves to reveal the origins of consciousness and disease.

At Gist.Science, we bring these discoveries directly from bioRxiv, the leading preprint server for biological sciences, to a broader audience. We process every new neuroscience preprint as it is uploaded, transforming dense academic manuscripts into clear, plain-language explanations alongside detailed technical summaries. This ensures that both curious readers and specialists can stay current with the latest breakthroughs before they are formally published.

Below are the latest neuroscience papers we have processed from bioRxiv, offering fresh insights into the workings of the mind.

🧠 neuroscience

A computational neuroimaging account of impulsive premature decision-making

This study proposes and validates a neurocomputational account of premature responding impulsivity (PRI) as an adaptive response to environmental uncertainty, demonstrating through fMRI and hierarchical Bayesian modeling that volatility modulates a distributed cortico-subcortical network involving the anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, striatum, and midbrain regions to regulate impulsive decision-making.

Cole, D. M., Diaconescu, A. O., Mathys, C. D., Wentz, T., Nagy, Z., Seifritz, E., Quednow, B. B., Rigoux, L.2026-01-21
🧠 neuroscience

An anatomical hotspot for striatal dopamine-acetylcholine interactions during reward and movement

This study identifies a specific anatomical hotspot in the anterior dorsolateral striatum where dopamine and acetylcholine exhibit unique, behaviorally relevant anti-correlated dynamics driven by D2-mediated inhibition, revealing that their interaction is spatially organized rather than uniform across the striatum.

Bouabid, S., Vu, M.-A. T., Noggle, C., Vietti-Michelina, S., Brimblecombe, K., Platt, N., Zhang, L., Joshi, A., Cragg, S (…)2026-01-21
🧠 neuroscience

The core herpes simplex-1 fusion complex drives cell-to-cell spreading of pathological Tau

This study demonstrates that the core fusion complex of latent herpes simplex virus-1 facilitates the intercellular spread of pathological Tau aggregates, suggesting that antiviral antibodies could potentially inhibit this mechanism and slow neurodegenerative disease progression.

Heumueller, S.-E., Sushkin, M., Sanchez-Sendin, E., Hossinger, A., Stappert, D., Altinisik, N., Seiwert, L., Paulsen, L. (…)2026-01-21
🧠 neuroscience

USP30 inhibition improves mitochondrial health through both PINK1-dependent and independent mechanisms

This study demonstrates that inhibiting USP30 improves mitochondrial health and enhances mitophagy through both PINK1/Parkin-dependent and independent mechanisms, suggesting it as a viable therapeutic strategy for Parkinson's disease even in patients with PINK1 or PRKN mutations.

Williamson, M. G., Heon-Roberts, R., Franks, S. N. J., Mock, E., Jones, H. B. L., Malpartida, A. B., Britti, E., Bassal (…)2026-01-20
🧠 neuroscience

Stimulus dependencies---rather than next-word prediction---can explain pre-onset brain encoding in naturalistic listening designs

This paper challenges the interpretation of pre-onset brain activity as evidence of neural prediction by demonstrating that observed encoding hallmarks can be equally explained by inherent statistical dependencies in natural language stimuli, as shown by their presence in passive control systems like word embeddings and speech acoustics.

Schönmann, I., Szewczyk, J., de Lange, F. P., Heilbron, M.2026-01-20
🧠 neuroscience

Attention modulates neural representations of acoustic, categorical, and identity features in a task-dependent manner

Using fMRI and representational similarity analysis, this study demonstrates that auditory attention flexibly modulates neural representations in a task-dependent manner, enhancing low-level acoustic features when competing sounds share a category but targeting abstract category-level information when sounds differ by category, while consistently influencing object-identity representations across both scenarios.

Varis, O., Muukkonen, I., Wikman, P.2026-01-20
🧠 neuroscience

Motor unit discharge properties are modestly influenced by menstrual cycle-related fluctuations in sex hormone concentrations

This multi-site study demonstrates that while endogenous fluctuations in estradiol and progesterone across the menstrual cycle significantly influence human motor unit discharge properties, the magnitude of these effects is modest, underscoring the need for rigorous, well-powered research in female neuromuscular physiology.

Jenz, S. T., Spillane, P., O'Hanlon, M., Nedelec, E., The MUSH Collaboration,, Heckman, C., Piasecki, M., Ansdell, P., P (…)2026-01-20