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Understanding how high-dimensional neural activity and behavior emerge from shared underlying dynamics remains a fundamental challenge in neuroscience. Addressing this problem is key to enabling digital twins that can faithfully reproduce and predict the multiscale brain-behavior dynamics of living systems. Here we present NEBULA (NEural and Behavioral modeling through Unified LAtent dynamics), a generative framework that jointly models whole-brain neural activity and behavior. Using brain-wide recordings from C. elegans, the model learns a unified latent dynamical structure that supports long-horizon generation of neural and behavioral trajectories, realistic simulations of behavior, and targeted virtual interventions. Perturbations of the learned dynamics reveal behaviorally relevant transition points, whereas steering interventions enable controlled manipulation of neural and behavioral states without retraining. These results establish a framework for linking brain dynamics to behavior in a living organism and provide a foundation for scalable virtual experimentation in neuroscience.

by Mckenna Eklund, Edan Foley Mutations in the innate immune receptor NOD2 are the greatest single genetic risk factor for Crohn’s disease, yet the mechanisms by which NOD2 regulates intestinal homeostasis remain unclear. We used a CRISPR-generated zebrafish model to determine the impacts of NOD2 deficiency on intestinal health. In cellular, molecular, and transcriptomic studies, we uncovered substantial effects of NOD2 deficiency on epithelial and immune compartments, including deregulated expression of developmental pathways that establish and maintain the gut epithelium, and an unexpected increase in the expression of multiple estrogen-response genes. In functional assays, we uncovered a mechanistic link between estrogenic signals and NOD2-deficiency phenotypes, whereby exposure to estrogen alone replicated the effects of NOD2-deficiency, and treatment with the estrogen receptor modulator tamoxifen reverted the epithelial defects observed in nod2 mutants. Our findings identify a NOD2-estrogen regulatory axis that supports intestinal homeostasis and suggest that hormonal signaling may contribute to sex-specific aspects of Crohn’s disease.

Continuous Psychophysics, which couples a continuous stimulus with a continuous response, is a promising tool to break out of the confines of traditional designs based on discrete trials. In this pre-registered study, we explore to what extent this paradigm is useful in the study of multisensory integration. We expand on Tonelli et al.s (2025) seminal study by additionally examining the role of eye-movements, using a Kalman filter to estimate the sensory noise underlying behavioral tracking parameters and employing a virtual reality set-up. We immersed two cohorts of participants (n = 30 each) in a virtual meadow environment and asked them to continuously track a drone (Experiment 1) or a swarm of flies (Experiment 2) with a controller, while simultaneously recording their eye movements. We manipulated the reliability of visual cues using four levels of fog (from a completely clear view to impenetrable fog where no visual cues to the targets position were available) as well as the presence of sound cues emitted from the object (sound present/absent). The maximum correlation between stimulus and response was higher when sound was present in some conditions, particularly when visual uncertainty was high, while the tracking delay remained unaffected across all fog levels. Using a Kalman filter to estimate the underlying sensory noise, we found strong evidence that sensory noise was lower when sound was present than when sound was absent both for manual and for ocular tracking, particularly for those conditions with higher visual uncertainty. In exploratory analyses, we further show strong correlations between manual and ocular tracking in all measures (maximum correlation, tracking delay, sensory precision). However, when isolating the multisensory advantage, these correlations all but disappeared for maximum correlation and tracking delay, while remaining substantial for sensory precision. Similarly, behavioral tracking correlated generally strongly with underlying sensory noise, but much less so when it came to the advantage conferred by added sound cues. Our results show that continuous psychophysics is well-suited for the study of multisensory integration, particularly when a Kalman filter analysis is used to estimate sensory uncertainty from behavioral data.

In the last 25 years, research on dehumanization—the tendency to perceive others as less than fully human—has spiked and evolved in many ways. In the current review, we will provide an overview of the various methodological and conceptual trends in this research area and introduce a new way of conceptualizing dehumanizing perceptions. Focusing on developments in neuroscience that have shown how human and object stimuli are typically processed in different ways using specific brain areas, dehumanization can be understood as the fading of this human–object divide. We will demonstrate what this process account of dehumanization implies for the understanding of the concept, how it can respond to some of the recent controversies and critiques, and how a research agenda integrating the study of developmental mechanisms can bolster our understanding of dehumanization processes.