How do small groups of neurons decide whether we approach a reward or avoid a threat? In a study published April 2nd 2025 in Nature Communications, Frank Meye’s lab at UMC Utrecht shows that distinct neuronal clusters (i.e. neuronal ensembles) in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are essential for encoding positive and negative experiences.

In a study published in Biological Psychiatry, Cato Romero, Christiaan de Leeuw, Marijn Schipper, Bernardo Maciel, Martijn van den Heuvel, Rachel Brouwer, and Sophie van der Sluis from WP1 teamed up with colleagues Guus Smit and Frank Koopmans from WP3 to investigate why individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia tend to have shorter stature on average—a link first documented by Edward Burchard’s Physique and Psychosis nearly ninety years ago.

BRAINSCAPES scientists have developed a powerful new tool to pinpoint genes most likely causally linked to diseases, potentially accelerating drug development and advancing our understanding of disease biology. 

Recently BRAINSCAPES member Dr. Danai Riga was awarded the Amsterdam UMC fellowship. The fellowship (750K euro) will support here in establishing her independent research line and expand her research group. As of the first of November, Dr. Riga starts her new position as team leader within the Functional Genomics (FGA) group of the CNCR. With this her official involvement in BRAINSCAPES come to an end, although her future research will further build upon findings acquired in the project. We took the opportunity to congratulate Dr. Riga and ask her a few questions.

Through a tightly organized cascade of patterning, specification and differentiation events, the human brain develops into a highly complex system capable of unique cognitive abilities beyond those of other mammals. Although gene expression across the developing brain has been described at single-cell resolution, similar atlases of chromatin accessibility have been primarily focused on the regulatory landscape of the developing human forebrain in the second-trimester of pregnancy. A collaboration between Marijn Schipper and Danielle Posthuma from CNCR-CTG and Camiel Mannens and Sten Linnarsson from the Karolinska Institute Sweden has opened a new window in creating the first map of chromatin accessibility and paired gene expression in the entire embryonic human brain in the first three months of development. The study is published May 1, 2024 in Nature.

On 12 December 2023 the Annual Amsterdam Neuroscience meeting took place at the RAI Amsterdam. In the afternoon a special session was dedicated to “Consortia at work”. Different “duos” involved in large consortia explained the strength and added value of these collaborative initiatives. In this first part we highlight the talk by Prof. dr. Huib Mansvelder and Prof. dr. Boudewijn Lelieveldt, two of the lead-PIs of BRAINSCAPES, who shared their experiences and involvement in the prestigious US Brain Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN). This large-scale effort sees eleven different groups (and techniques) combined to develop cell atlases of the primate brain. In the past years BICAN’s predecessor has yielded its first important successes, and achieved things that no other single lab could do at this scale. Besides this, consortia help to extend networks and (importantly) are also just great fun! 

Single-cell RNA-sequencing is increasingly used to map the cellular heterogeneity of complex tissues. For example, more than 300 studies profiled a total of over 44 million cells across different brain regions, ages, and species. Since different research groups usually specialize in different cell-type compartments, these datasets usually differ in terminology and annotation depth. Our understanding of cellular diversity can be greatly enhanced by integrating these datasets to obtain a comprehensive atlas. In a recent publication, Lieke Michielsen, Marcel Reinders and Ahmed Mahfouz, in collaboration with the group of Fabian Theis (Helmholtz Centrum München), present ‘treeArches’, a framework to automatically build and update such reference atlases with a corresponding cell-type hierarchy. The atlas can be used to transfer cell annotations to new unlabeled datasets, facilitating reproducible analysis.

Recently, BRAINSCAPES PI Dr. Ingo Willuhn and his team were awarded an NWO VICI grant for their research into the function of serotonin and dopamine across brain regions. While there are already quite extensive insights into the individual action of these two neuromodulators, there is little understanding of the combined effects of these two systems on the brain. The VICI grant will allow Dr. Willuhn and his team to study interactive dopamine and serotonin signals in multiple brain regions. With this they aim to improve knowledge on the neurobiology of dysregulated behaviors, such as impulsivity which is a core symptom of several psychiatric disorders. Thus, ultimately, the findings may lead to the improved treatment of psychiatric disorders. Now that the good news has been received, Dr. Willuhn is organizing things to get started on the research. We have asked him a few questions on how things are going.