On June 19, 2026, Nature Neuroscience published online a research article entitled “Tryptamine from wake-active monoaminergic neurons regulates sleep homeostasis.” The study was led by the research group of Dr. ZHANG Zhe. The study reveals for the first time that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of tryptamine (TrpA) track homeostatic sleep pressure. It further demonstrates that tryptamine is produced by wake-active monoaminergic neurons and, by activating GPR139—a G-protein-coupled receptor expressed in the sleep-regulating preoptic area (POA)—raises the excitability of sleep-promoting neurons to promote sleep. The work identifies the “tryptamine–GPR139” pathway as a molecular substrate of sleep pressure and suggests it as a promising new druggable target for treating insomnia.
On June 11, 2026, Nature published an Article entitled “A Thalamus–Brainstem Attractor Network Drives History-Biased Decisions.” Using brain-wide single-cell-resolution calcium imaging in larval zebrafish, closed-loop virtual-reality behavior, optogenetic manipulation and neural computational modeling, the study reveals how the brain coordinates multiple computational modules to stably maintain recent experience and flexibly use this information to guide future decisions.
On May 15, 2026, Nature Communications published an online research article entitled “distributed neural codes of the 3D position in the marmoset frontal cortex and hippocampus”. The study identified place cells encoding the 3D position in a distributed neural network of brain areas including frontal cortex and hippocampus. This research was conducted by teams from the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Institute of Neuroscience (ION) at Chinese Academy of Sciences with the co-corresponding authors including Dr. XU Chun Xu and Dr. LIU Cirong.
This study, entitled “De Novo Fast Motion Computation in the Primate Visual Cortex,” was published online in Cell Reports on March 17, 2026. These changing gears to see fast and slow offers insights for information processing in other species, modalities and machine vision.
Researchers led by CAS member YAN Jun, in collaboration with other insititution. The research published on Neuron reconstructed the cellular architecture and spatial transcriptomic atlas of the human suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)—the core brain region regulating circadian behavior—at the single-cell level, and systematically dissected the neuronal subtypes of the human SCN.
