Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02335-8
Repetition on the brain
The hippocampus is listening
Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02334-9
The hippocampus is listening
Flexibility begins in the dendrites
Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02336-7
Flexibility begins in the dendrites
A neural signature to predict attention shifting delays in children and adults
Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02295-z
Moment-to-moment lapses in attention shifting impair behavior and learning. These lapses are common in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders involving attention deficits. We identify a neural signature that predicts delayed performance on a set-shifting task and show that real-time closed-loop neuromodulation can prevent lapses and improve performance.
Stereotyped positioning of olfactory receptors
Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 08 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02337-6
Stereotyped positioning of olfactory receptors
Health workers at the epicenter of Congo’s Ebola outbreak labor with little pay or rest
MONGBWALU, Congo — Dr. Richard Lokudu, the medical director of Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital, has received barely any compensation for his work on the front line of one of Congo’s deadliest Ebola virus outbreaks.
Lokudu and several of his colleagues work all day at the hospital treating an influx of patients. Notifications of suspected cases come even late at night.
STAT+: AstraZeneca’s GLP-1 pill shows promise in obesity, diabetes trials
AstraZeneca’s investigational GLP-1 pill showed promise in mid-stage obesity and diabetes studies, but it may still be too early to determine how it stacks up against oral treatments already on the market.
In one Phase 2 trial of people with obesity, called VISTA, those on the highest dose of the drug, called elecoglipron, lost 11.2% of their weight after 36 weeks, when looking at all patients regardless of discontinuations, according to data presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and published in the Lancet. (Eli Lilly’s pill Foundayo led to the same rate of weight loss in a Phase 3 study that lasted twice as long, but it’s hard to compare across trials in different phases.)
In a separate Phase 2 trial in people with diabetes, called SOLSTICE, patients on the highest dose saw up to a 1.74 percentage-point decrease in a measure of blood sugar called A1C after 26 weeks. The study, also published in the Lancet, enrolled people taking oral Ozempic open-label as a comparator group, and they experienced a smaller A1C decrease of 1.32 percentage points.
GLP-1 Drugs Linked to Lower Rates of Substance Use Disorders
A study led by researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has found that people with type 2 diabetes or obesity who were prescribed GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) had substantially lower odds of developing alcohol, opioid, nicotine, and cocaine use disorders compared with similar individuals who were not taking the medications. The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, used health data from more than 142,000 patients from the All of Us Research Program and adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that GLP-1 medications may have an influence on dopamine signaling and other neural pathways that drive cravings not just for food but other substances.
“Our findings add to growing evidence that GLP-1 medications may influence more than appetite and blood sugar regulation,” said lead author Tadesse Abegaz, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Pharmacy, University of Texas at El Paso. “These medications appear to affect brain pathways involved in reward and craving, which could help explain the lower rates of substance use disorders observed in our study.”
Substance use disorders are a significant public health challenge contributing to illness, premature death, and higher healthcare costs. While current treatment methods that combine medications and behavioral therapy can be effective, relapse rates remain high, often exceeding 50% within the first year after treatment, suggesting a need for additional ways to treat this disease.
An emerging candidate for this are GLP-1 receptor agonists such as semaglutide and liraglutide. Developed to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, these drugs have drawn attention because GLP-1 receptors are found not only in areas involved in metabolic regulation but also in brain regions associated with reward and reinforcement.
“Animal studies have demonstrated that GLP-1 RAs reduce the self-administration of alcohol, opioid, nicotine, and cocaine effects [that] are believed to be mediated through interactions with the mesolimbic dopamine system,” the researchers wrote. Small human studies and observational analyses have also suggested reductions in substance cravings, relapse rates, and alcohol-related hospitalizations among some patients receiving GLP-1 therapies.
The El Paso investigators said they initiated their research to move beyond smaller studies because “the real-world impact of GLP-1 RA on multiple co-occurrence of SUD (substance use disorder) has not been systematically investigated.”
To address this gap, the team conducted a retrospective nested case-control study using data from the NIH’s All of Us Research Program. The study examined individuals with type 2 diabetes or obesity and identified cases involving new diagnoses of alcohol use disorder, opioid use disorder, nicotine use disorder, or cocaine use disorder. These individuals were compared with matched control participants who had diabetes or obesity but no documented history of substance use disorders.
Analyses of these data showed consistent associations across all categories studied. GLP-1 receptor agonist use was associated with a 74% reduction in the odds of alcohol use disorder, a 69% reduction in the odds of opioid use disorder, a 68% reduction in the odds of nicotine use disorder, and a 75% reduction in the odds of cocaine use disorder. The researchers also reported 75% lower odds of any substance use disorder among GLP-1 users compared with non-users.
“Exposure to GLP-1 RAs was consistently associated with significantly reduced odds of SUD cases,” the researchers wrote. “These findings suggest that GLP-1 RAs may exert behavioral-modifying effects that extend beyond glycemic control and weight loss.”
The researchers noted that their research was observational and does not establish cause and effect. “We do not support prescribing these medications for addiction treatment at this time,” said senior author Gabriel Frietze, PhD, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at UTEP. “Because this was an observational study in a specific clinical population, randomized clinical trials are needed before GLP-1 medications can be recommended for treating addiction.”
The team believes the findings could help guide future approaches to addressing substance use-related health issues by identifying biological pathways that may be targeted therapeutically. The authors noted that mechanisms potentially involved include modulation of dopamine release, suppression of neuroinflammation, and attenuation of stress-related neural circuits.
“Our next goal is to conduct prospective research that follows individuals initiating GLP-1 therapy over time,” Abegaz said. “We aim to evaluate whether changes in the substance use behaviors occur after treatment begins and whether these changes related to improvements in mental health and quality of life. Ultimately, this work will help inform whether GLP-1 medications could become part of future treatment strategies for substance use disorders.”
The post GLP-1 Drugs Linked to Lower Rates of Substance Use Disorders appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
TARGA Imager Enables High-Resolution Imaging of Neurodevelopmental Models
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Neurodevelopment in schizophrenia poses major challenges for experimental study due at least in part to the brain’s genetic complexity, cellular diversity, and limitations in accessing living human tissue. To overcome such barriers, researchers often use complementary human stem cell–derived models: adherent cortical organoids and Neurogenin-2 (NGN2) induced neurons. Adherent cortical organoids form three-dimensional cultures containing diverse cortical neuron types, enabling analysis of network development and long-term maturation over months.1 In contrast, NGN2 neurons generate rapid, two-dimensional, homogeneous populations of excitatory neurons that display robust activity within weeks, making them well suited for scalable, functional assays, and high-throughput screening.2
With the added insight that stem cell models offer into the neural development of the schizophrenic brain, the quantification of patient-derived neurons’ collective function is a priority.3 At Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain and Behavior Institute, researchers use NGN2 neurons, yielding reproducible populations of excitatory cortical neurons that scale reliably across experiments.
Calcium imaging provides a powerful functional readout in these NGN2 neuron networks. When a neuron fires an action potential, voltage-gated calcium channels open and intracellular calcium rises sharply.4 Fluorescence calcium indicators convert transient, ionic changes into fluorescence emission that can be quantitatively detected via light microscopy across thousands of cells simultaneously. Coupling calcium-sensitive reporters with high-speed optical microscopy enables noninvasive, population-level measurement of neural activity, synchrony, and network dynamics. Interpreting these rich image sequences requires sophisticated theoretical and numerical approaches.5
Building on the ability to measure neural activity with calcium imaging at scale, Lumencor’s TARGA Imager represents a transformative step in the development of optical imaging hardware for the study of neurodevelopmental conditions such as schizophrenia. It is well suited to workflows where NGN2-neuron cultures are studied across multiple conditions in parallel (Figure 1). In these contexts, TARGA delivers calcium fluorescence images over millimeter-scale fields of view within standard 96-well plates, entire well areas, while maintaining high-speed, faster-than video rate imaging with precision resolution.
These capabilities allow researchers to observe chemical communications across large neuronal networks rather than isolated cells in real time. Images can be acquired at frequencies up to 100 Hz, enabling capture of fast calcium transients of collective neuronal dynamics. Rapid switching of multicolor excitation light supports multiplexed fluorescence dyes, linking functional activity with cellular structure and organization.
Overall, TARGA achieves high spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution simultaneously with precise, automated opto-mechanical architecture. These data are well matched to modern image analysis and AI algorithms, generating robust fluorescence traces from complex neuronal populations (Figure 2). In combination, these features make the TARGA Imager a revelatory neuroscience tool, uniquely enabling visualization of emergent collective behavior at millimeter scale with exceptional resolution. Such integrated performance accelerates discovery by bridging cellular mechanisms and systems-level phenotypes relevant to schizophrenia pathophysiology and therapeutic screening. By uniting scale, speed, and precision in a single optical platform, TARGA empowers researchers to probe experimental neuroscience and strengthens translational studies of complex psychiatric disease at population scale.
References
- Van der Kroeg et al. Human adherent cortical organoids in a multiwell format. eLife. 2024. 13:e98340.
- Shan et al. Fully defined NGN2 neuron protocol reveals diverse signatures of neuronal maturation. Cell Reports Methods. 2024. 4:100858.
- Rao et al. Aberrant pace of cortical neuron development in brain organoids from patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome‑associated schizophrenia. Nature Communications. 2025. 16:6986.
- Zhang et al. Fast and sensitive GCaMP calcium indicators for imaging neural populations. Nature. 2023. 615:884–891.
- Pasarkar et al. maskNMF: A denoise‑sparsen‑detect approach for extracting neural signals from dense imaging data. bioRxiv. 2023. 2023.09.14.557777.
To learn more, visit: lumencor.com or contact our team at: info@lumencor.com.
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360° Video-Based Virtual Reality for Preparing Medical Students for Body Donor Dissection: Randomized Controlled Trial
Background: Body donor dissection is fundamental to medical education but often induces anxiety and emotional distress in students, potentially impacting learning outcomes and well-being. Traditional preparation methods emphasize technical and procedural elements while inadequately addressing students’ emotional challenges. Recent advances in educational technology, particularly 360° video-based virtual reality (VR), may enhance students’ emotional readiness by providing immersive previews of dissection environments. However, the application of this technology specifically for emotional preparation for body donor dissection remains largely unexplored. Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a 360° video-based VR application designed to enhance medical students’ emotional preparedness for their first body donor dissection experience. Methods: A randomized controlled longitudinal study was conducted with 43 first-year medical students (26/43, 60.5% female, mean age 20.9, SD 0.57 years) at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar in Fall 2025. Participants completed a baseline survey including the 40-item State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and were randomly assigned to intervention (n=22) or control (n=21) groups using computer-generated permuted block randomization. Before their first dissection session, the intervention group viewed a custom-designed 360° video-based VR experience that featured a virtual tour of the anatomy laboratory and a simulated first encounter with a body donor. The control group received no intervention. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory surveys were administered at baseline (survey 1, all participants), post-VR intervention (survey 2, intervention group only), and postfirst dissection (survey 3, all participants). A follow-up perception survey (survey 4) was administered to the intervention group 1 week into the dissection course. Data were analyzed using 2-tailed paired-samples and independent-samples tests, with qualitative responses analyzed using artificial intelligence–assisted thematic analysis. Results: The intervention group demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in trait anxiety (TA) immediately following the VR experience (mean difference 2.32, SD 4.95; =2.20; =.04), while the reduction in state anxiety (SA) was not significant (mean difference 2.41, SD 8.55; =1.32; =.20). No significant differences in SA or TA were found between intervention and control groups immediately before the first dissection session (SA: =0.03; =.98 and TA: =0.70; =.49) or in anxiety trajectories from baseline to postdissection (SA: =0.85; =.41 and TA: =0.46; =.65). Female students reported higher baseline TA compared to normative college populations (45.42 vs 40.40; mean difference 5.02, SD 7.72; =3.32; =.003). Qualitative analysis revealed positive perceptions, with 91% (10/11) reporting clear content and 82% (9/11) recommending it to future cohorts. Key perceived benefits included environmental familiarization, procedural understanding, and psychological preparation. Conclusions: The 360° video-based VR intervention significantly reduced TA and was perceived as valuable for emotional and procedural preparation. The intervention shows promise as a preparatory tool for enhancing emotional and procedural readiness; however, its impact on objective educational outcomes was not assessed and warrants further investigation. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07521033; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07521033
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