🧠 Category

neuroscience

1313 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

Arm Control and its Recovery after Selective Lesions of Sensorimotor Cortex and the Red Nucleus: A Kinematic Study in Non-Human Primates

This kinematic study in rhesus monkeys demonstrates that distinct sensorimotor cortex subdivisions and the red nucleus differentially contribute to reaching speed and trajectory variability, revealing that damage to Old M1 impairs force generation while New M1 affects fine control, and highlighting the critical compensatory role of the rubrospinal tract in recovery—a mechanism largely absent in humans.

Baines, A., Poll, A., Baker, A. M., Krakauer, J. W., Baker, S. N.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

Noise Correlation Length Distinguishes Neurometabolic Protection from Vulnerability Across HIV Infection Phases

This study resolves a 35-year paradox regarding HIV-induced neuroprotection by demonstrating that shorter environmental noise correlation lengths during acute infection, compared to chronic phases, serve as a conserved biophysical marker distinguishing resilient neurometabolic states through superlinear scaling validated across magnetic resonance spectroscopy, enzyme kinetics, and cross-system biological analogs.

Demidont, A. C.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

Visuomotor coordination on the road: low-dimensional representations reveal adaptive, context-dependent reductions in the dimensionality of natural driving behavior

This study demonstrates that naturalistic driving behavior is governed by shared, low-dimensional visuomotor coordination strategies that dynamically reduce their dimensionality and reorganize in a task-dependent manner to adapt to critical road hazards, thereby distinguishing between manual and autonomous driving conditions.

Madrid-Carvajal, J., Derakhshan, S., König, P.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

An optogenetics-compatible red fluorescent calcium indicator with negligible blue light photoactivation

The authors engineered ScaRCaMP, a novel red fluorescent calcium indicator based on mScarlet variants that exhibits negligible blue-light photoactivation and high photostability, making it uniquely suitable for optogenetics-compatible imaging in live cells and in vivo.

Zhang, X., Addison, B. R., Ulutas, E. Z., Deng, C. M., Doshi, S., Nabhan, S., Emanuel, A. J., Markowitz, J. E., Koveal (…)2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

Brain Transcriptomics Across Diverse Sleep-Wake Manipulations Reveals Multiple Homeostatic Pathways in Drosophila

This study utilizes comprehensive transcriptomic analysis across diverse sleep-wake manipulations in *Drosophila* to demonstrate that, unlike the universal circadian clock gene *period*, sleep homeostasis is governed by multiple distributed molecular pathways—including mitochondrial function, ribosome biogenesis, immunity, and neuropeptide signaling—rather than a single universal "sleeper" gene.

Rosensweig, C., Shah, A., Sisobhan, S., Andreani, T., Allada, R.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

Closing the loop between brain and electrical stimulation: A proof-of-concept randomized trial of real-time fMRI-guided tACS optimization

This proof-of-concept randomized trial demonstrates that a closed-loop, real-time fMRI-guided tACS system can successfully and selectively modulate frontoparietal functional connectivity in healthy adults, leading to enhanced working memory accuracy learning and sustained changes in intrinsic brain networks.

Soleimani, G., Kuplicki, R., Mulyana, B., Tsuchiyagaito, A., Misaki, M., Paulus, M. P., Ekhtiari, H.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

APOE4 Genotype is Associated with Reduced Cortical VEGFR2 (KDR) Transcript Levels Independent of Endothelial Abundance: An AMP-AD RNA-seq Pilot Study

This AMP-AD pilot study reveals that APOE4 genotype is associated with a modest but significant reduction in cortical VEGFR2 (KDR) transcript levels independent of endothelial cell abundance and neuropathological burden, suggesting a specific APOE4-driven mechanism for vascular dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease.

Laing, K., Montagne, A.2026-03-03
🧠 neuroscience

Developmental and genetic modulation of evidence integration dynamics in zebrafish sensorimotor decision-making

By combining high-throughput behavioral assays with drift-diffusion modeling in larval zebrafish, this study reveals that evidence integration dynamics mature during development and are selectively disrupted by mutations associated with human epilepsy and schizophrenia, demonstrating a scalable approach to studying the algorithmic basis of sensorimotor decision-making in health and disease.

Garza, R., El Hady, A., Bahl, A.2026-03-03