When kept alive for more than a year, brain organoids with mutations like those found in the leading cause of childhood epilepsy show developmental anomalies leading to inflammation, pointing to one possible cause of seizures and potential treatments. The disorder, tuberous sclerosis complex, manifests shortly after birth, when potato-shaped lesions form. The organoids develop hyperreactive astrocytes that lead to similar focal lesions. The cells’ gene expression profiles also resemble those seen in neurodegenerative diseases.

A new study shows that fish swimming in schools can avoid danger just by seeing their neighbors escape. UC San Diego researchers studied how individuals identify their social partners’ actions by imaging the brain activity of translucent glassfish swimming in a virtual reality environment.

Large-scale studies across the Nature journals create one of the world’s most comprehensive single-cell atlases of Alzheimer’s disease and related neuropsychiatric conditions