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Table of Contents

October 2024

Neurotechnology offers unprecedented opportunities to treat neural disorders, restore brain function and enhance cognitive abilities. However, its vast potential is matched by significant scientific, technological and ethical challenges. This PLOS Biology collection explores the present and possible futures of neurotechnology to improve human health and cognition. The image shows an artist’s fanciful overlay of brain and technology-related motifs.

Image Credit: Pixabay user Gerd Altmann

Perspectives

Advances and challenges in the development of visual prostheses

Eduardo Fernandez, Jose Antonio Robles

Can neurotechnology revolutionize cognitive enhancement?

Ines R. Violante, Prince Okyere

Research Articles

Reviving collapsed plant–pollinator networks from a single species

Gaurav Baruah, Meike J. Wittmann

Intragenomic conflicts with plasmids and chromosomal mobile genetic elements drive the evolution of natural transformation within species

Fanny Mazzamurro, Jason Baby Chirakadavil, Isabelle Durieux, Ludovic Poiré, Julie Plantade, Christophe Ginevra, Sophie Jarraud, Gottfried Wilharm, Xavier Charpentier, Eduardo P. C. Rocha

Mice employ a bait-and-switch escape mechanism to de-escalate social conflict

Rachel S. Clein, Megan R. Warren, Joshua P. Neunuebel

Individualistic reward-seeking strategies that predict response to nicotine emerge among isogenic male mice living in a micro-society

Sophie L. Fayad, Lauren M. Reynolds, Nicolas Torquet, Stefania Tolu, Sarah Mondoloni, Claire Nguyen, Amy Siriphanh, Robin Justo, Steve Didienne, Nicolas Debray, Cécile Viollet, Louis Raynaud, Yasmine Layadi, Coralie Fouquet, Bernadette Hannesse, Ana-Marta Capaz, Thomas Topilko, Nicolas Renier, Alexandre Mourot, Fabio Marti, Philippe Faure

Functional reorganization of brain regions supporting artificial grammar learning across the first half year of life

Lin Cai, Takeshi Arimitsu, Naomi Shinohara, Takao Takahashi, Yoko Hakuno, Masahiro Hata, Ei-ichi Hoshino, Stuart K. Watson, Simon W. Townsend, Jutta L. Mueller, Yasuyo Minagawa

Object color knowledge representation occurs in the macaque brain despite the absence of a developed language system

Minghui Zhao, Yumeng Xin, Haoyun Deng, Zhentao Zuo, Xiaoying Wang, Yanchao Bi, Ning Liu

Decoding reveals the neural representation of perceived and imagined musical sounds

David R. Quiroga-Martinez, Gemma Fernández Rubio, Leonardo Bonetti, Kriti G. Achyutuni, Athina Tzovara, Robert T. Knight, Peter Vuust

Dog–human vocal interactions match dogs’ sensory-motor tuning

Eloïse C. Déaux, Théophane Piette, Florence Gaunet, Thierry Legou, Luc Arnal, Anne-Lise Giraud

Related Articles

Impaired motor-to-sensory transformation mediates auditory hallucinations

Fuyin Yang, Hao Zhu, Xinyi Cao, Hui Li, Xinyu Fang, Lingfang Yu, Siqi Li, Zenan Wu, Chunbo Li, Chen Zhang, Xing Tian

The human olfactory bulb communicates perceived odor valence to the piriform cortex in the gamma band and receives a refined representation back in the beta band

Frans Nordén, Behzad Iravani, Martin Schaefer, Anja L. Winter, Mikael Lundqvist, Artin Arshamian, Johan N. Lundström

Functional networks of inhibitory neurons orchestrate synchrony in the hippocampus

Marco Bocchio, Artem Vorobyev, Sadra Sadeh, Sophie Brustlein, Robin Dard, Susanne Reichinnek, Valentina Emiliani, Agnes Baude, Claudia Clopath, Rosa Cossart

Amalgam plays a dual role in controlling the number of leg muscle progenitors and regulating their interactions with the developing Drosophila tendon

Blandine Moucaud, Elodie Prince, Elia Ragot, Yoan Renaud, Krzysztof Jagla, Guillaume Junion, Cedric Soler

The development of hepatic steatosis depends on the presence of liver-innervating parasympathetic cholinergic neurons in mice fed a high-fat diet

Jiyeon Hwang, Junichi Okada, Li Liu, Jeffrey E. Pessin, Gary J. Schwartz, Young-Hwan Jo

Chromatin remodeller Chd7 is developmentally regulated in the neural crest by tissue-specific transcription factors

Ruth M. Williams, Guneş Taylor, Irving T. C. Ling, Ivan Candido-Ferreira, Daniel M. Fountain, Sarah Mayes, Perihan Seda Ateş-Kalkan, Julianna O. Haug, Andrew J. Price, Sean A. McKinney, Yavor K. Bozhilovh, Richard C. V. Tyser, Shankar Srinivas, Jim R. Hughes, Tatjana Sauka-Spengler

Widespread regulation of the maternal transcriptome by Nanos in Drosophila

Mohammad Marhabaie, Tammy H. Wharton, Sung Yun Kim, Robin P. Wharton

Ortholog of autism candidate gene RBM27 regulates mitoribosomal assembly factor MALS-1 to protect against mitochondrial dysfunction and axon degeneration during neurodevelopment

Tamjid A. Chowdhury, David A. Luy, Garrett Scapellato, Dorian Farache, Amy S. Y. Lee, Christopher C. Quinn

Disruption of tRNA biogenesis enhances proteostatic resilience, improves later-life health, and promotes longevity

Yasir Malik, Yavuz Kulaberoglu, Shajahan Anver, Sara Javidnia, Gillian Borland, Rene Rivera, Stephen Cranwell, Danel Medelbekova, Tatiana Svermova, Jackie Thomson, Susan Broughton, Tobias von der Haar, Colin Selman, Jennifer M. A. Tullet, Nazif Alic

Free long-chain fatty acids trigger early postembryonic development in starved Caenorhabditis elegans by suppressing mTORC1

Meiyu Ruan, Fan Xu, Na Li, Jing Yu, Fukang Teng, Jiawei Tang, Cheng Huang, Huanhu Zhu

MICU2 up-regulation enhances tumor aggressiveness and metabolic reprogramming during colorectal cancer development

Alison Robert, David Crottès, Jérôme Bourgeais, Naig Gueguen, Arnaud Chevrollier, Jean-François Dumas, Stéphane Servais, Isabelle Domingo, Stéphanie Chadet, Julien Sobilo, Olivier Hérault, Thierry Lecomte, Christophe Vandier, William Raoul, Maxime Guéguinou

MMTV RNA packaging requires an extended long-range interaction for productive Gag binding to packaging signals

Suresha G. Prabhu, Vineeta N. Pillai, Lizna Mohamed Ali, Valérie Vivet-Boudou, Akhil Chameettachal, Serena Bernacchi, Farah Mustafa, Roland Marquet, Tahir A. Rizvi

Structure of G protein-coupled receptor GPR1 bound to full-length chemerin adipokine reveals a chemokine-like reverse binding mode

Aijun Liu, Yezhou Liu, Geng Chen, Wenping Lyu, Fang Ye, Junlin Wang, Qiwen Liao, Lizhe Zhu, Yang Du, Richard D. Ye

Short Reports

Evolution of sex differences in cooperation can be explained by trade-offs with dispersal

Pablo Capilla-Lasheras, Nina Bircher, Antony M. Brown, Xavier Harrison, Thomas Reed, Jennifer E. York, Dominic L. Cram, Christian Rutz, Lindsay Walker, Marc Naguib, Andrew J. Young

The expectations humans have of a pleasurable sensation asymmetrically shape neuronal responses and subjective experiences to hot sauce

Yi Luo, Terry Lohrenz, Ellen A. Lumpkin, P. Read Montague, Kenneth T. Kishida

Activation of plant immunity through conversion of a helper NLR homodimer into a resistosome

Muniyandi Selvaraj, AmirAli Toghani, Hsuan Pai, Yu Sugihara, Jiorgos Kourelis, Enoch Lok Him Yuen, Tarhan Ibrahim, He Zhao, Rongrong Xie, Abbas Maqbool, Juan Carlos De la Concepcion, Mark J. Banfield, Lida Derevnina, Benjamin Petre, David M. Lawson, Tolga O. Bozkurt, Chih-Hang Wu, Sophien Kamoun, Mauricio P. Contreras

Structures of the mycobacterial MmpL4 and MmpL5 transporters provide insights into their role in siderophore export and iron acquisition

Rakesh Maharjan, Zhemin Zhang, Philip A. Klenotic, William D. Gregor, Marios L. Tringides, Meng Cui, Georgiana E. Purdy, Edward W. Yu

Amyloid accelerator polyphosphate fits as the mystery density in α-synuclein fibrils

Philipp Huettemann, Pavithra Mahadevan, Justine Lempart, Eric Tse, Budheswar Dehury, Brian F. P. Edwards, Daniel R. Southworth, Bikash R. Sahoo, Ursula Jakob

Methods and Resources

A multichannel electrophysiological approach to noninvasively and precisely record human spinal cord activity

Birgit Nierula, Tilman Stephani, Emma Bailey, Merve Kaptan, Lisa-Marie Geertje Pohle, Ulrike Horn, André Mouraux, Burkhard Maess, Arno Villringer, Gabriel Curio, Vadim V. Nikulin, Falk Eippert

Preregistered Research Article

Longitudinal single-subject neuroimaging study reveals effects of daily environmental, physiological, and lifestyle factors on functional brain connectivity

Ana María Triana, Juha Salmi, Nicholas Mark Edward Alexander Hayward, Jari Saramäki, Enrico Glerean