A clinically viable speech neuroprosthesis could restore natural speech to individuals with vocal-tract paralysis. In this Review, Silva et al. discuss rapid progress in neural interfaces and computational algorithms for decoding speech from cortical activity and propose evaluation metrics to help standardize speech neuroprostheses.

The location-specific firing of hippocampal place cells changes when an animal enters a new environment, a phenomenon known as ‘remapping’. In this Perspective, André A. Fenton challenges standard models of place cell remapping and proposes a key role for the ‘re-registration’ of internally organized place cell population dynamics in the encoding of distinct environments.

Many cognitive functions rely on the ability to link distinct but related memories, while retaining the capacity to recall the individual details of the linked memories. Inokuchi and colleagues describe evidence that memory linking involves engram overlap and discuss the mechanisms that regulate this process.

The developmental colonization of the brain by microglial progenitors and establishment of microglial cell identity set the stage for microglial function in the adult. Barry-Carroll and Gomez-Nicola describe the mechanisms that regulate the development of microglia, including their origins, infiltration and colonization of the brain, proliferation and fate determination.

In this Journal Club, Adrien Peyrache highlights a 1998 paper that showed memory formation as a dynamic process involving multiple brain areas.

In this Journal Club, Izumi Fukunaga discusses John Hopfield’s 1995 paper, which proposed a mechanism by which a continuously variable sensory stimulus can be transformed into a timing-based code.

Mendelian randomization analyses reveal potential causal associations between dysfunction of brain functional networks and psychiatric disorders.

In this Journal Club, Tina Liu describes a 1988 paper that revealed the capacity of the sensory cortex for functional reorganization

A subset of female mice that show anxiety-related traits seek out a starvation-like state when exposed to repeated stress