
A recent Nature Communications study reveals that the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) collaborate to form a cognitive map of emotions, organizing feelings along valence and arousal dimensions. Using fMRI data combined with the Tolman‑Eichenbaum Machine, researchers showed a hierarchical representation: the interior hippocampus encodes broad good‑bad categories while posterior regions capture nuanced emotional nodes. The vmPFC tracks relational transitions between these nodes, effectively charting how one feeling can lead to another. The findings suggest that reduced granularity in this map may underlie depressive and anxious states.

Researchers at UC San Diego used long‑read whole‑genome sequencing (LR‑WGS) on 267 autism families, uncovering 33% more structural variants and 38% more tandem repeats than short‑read methods. By pairing the genomic data with DNA‑methylation profiles, they could directly observe how...

Researchers at the University of Iowa recorded intracranial EEG from 14 participants before and after a 20‑minute stationary‑bike workout, finding a rapid increase in high‑frequency hippocampal ripples that spread to cortical regions involved in learning. This is the first direct...