Depression in older people is a major contributor to global disease burden and functional impairment. While trait gratitude, a stable tendency to appreciate others' help, has been shown to alleviate depressive symptoms across populations, less is known about its neuroanatomical substrates and protective neuropsychological mechanisms against depression symptoms in aging populations. Here, we investigated the structural neural correlates of trait gratitude in 120 community-dwelling older women using voxel-based morphometry analysis of T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging data. First, the whole-brain correlation analysis identified a negative association between trait gratitude and regional gray matter volume (GMV) in the right precuneus. Mediation analyses further suggested that trait gratitude could mediate the impact of regional GMV in right precuneus on depression symptoms. Critically, supplemental analyses showed that the results persisted even after controlling for anxiety and stress symptoms, as well as general personality traits. Our study presents novel evidence for the neuroanatomical basis of trait gratitude in general older women and highlights a brain-personality-symptom pathway for protecting against depression in which GMV affects depressive symptoms via trait gratitude. These findings deepen understanding of gratitude's protective role in late-life mental health while highlighting potential neurostructural markers for resilience against depression.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can scaffold idea generation, but how it engages control, attention, and memory systems in the developing versus mature brain, and how this relates to creativity, remains unclear. We compared 6-7-yr-old children and adults during a naturalistic 5-min co-creative dialog with ChatGPT using the same prompt, in-scanner conversation, undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning and their dialogs were recorded. Functional connectivity was computed within and between seven large-scale networks: cingulo-opercular, default mode, memory retrieval, frontoparietal (FP), salience, ventral attention, and dorsal attention (DAN). Creativity scores, assessed outside of the scanner, did not differ between groups. Adults showed stronger within-network connectivity in control/attention systems, most robustly in FP, with additional effects in salience and DAN. Adults also exhibited greater cross-network integration, particularly FP-salience and FP-DAN couplings, alongside broader adult-greater effects among memory- and attention-related pairs. During a co-creative AI-assisted conversation, children exhibit a less coherent and integrated control-attention-memory architecture than adults. The combination of similar creativity scores with divergent neural profiles suggests that developmental differences in the implementation of creative cognition may be more pronounced than baseline capacity. This highlights FP-centric pathways and their salience-gated interactions as candidate substrates by which creativity supports goal-directed co-creative dialog with AI.

Why is human music rhythmically structured the way it is? One hypothesis is that the human brain is intrinsically wired to favor specific rhythmic organizations. To test this, we collected diffusion and resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) data from musically untrained participants and, weeks later, asked them to imitate randomly generated drumming sequences using finger taps. These imitations exhibited systematic biases toward temporal structures widespread in human music: predictable patterns characterized by isochronous organization (1:1) and other small integer ratios (2:1 and 3:1). Functional connectome analyses linked the increased rhythmic predictability of reproduced rhythms to intrinsic interactions between networks implicated in auditory timing (auditory basal ganglia) and executive control (task-positive and task-negative networks). Notably, the tendency toward isochrony-a feature highly conserved across species-was selectively associated with increased fiber density within a cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical network previously implicated in the perception and production of a metronomic pulse from music (the "beat"). Our findings reveal how stable neural architecture predisposes humans to produce rhythmically structured patterns. This evidence links intrinsic brain circuitry to individual cultural expressions, supporting the account of human symbolic systems, including music, as biocultural hybrids.

Suicidal ideation and behavior (SIB) represent a major clinical challenge in major depressive disorder (MDD), yet the multimodal brain structural signatures associated with SIB and their relationships with cognitive dysfunction remain poorly understood. We acquired multimodal neuroimaging measures, including gray matter volume, cortical thickness, pial area (PA), white matter fractional anisotropy, together with neurocognitive measures from 61 MDD patients with SIB (MDD-SIB), 38 without SIB (MDD-nSIB), and 142 healthy controls (HC). Linked independent component analysis (LICA) was used to identify covarying multimodal structural brain patterns, followed by group comparisons and exploratory association analyses. LICA identified distinct multimodal structural patterns related to SIB status, with IC1, IC9, and IC14 differing between MDD-SIB and HC, and IC12 between MDD-SIB and MDD-nSIB. Spatial working memory (SWM), visual memory, sustained attention, and cognitive flexibility also differed significantly across groups, with the MDD-SIB group showing poorer performance across these cognitive domains. Within the MDD-SIB group, IC1, a fronto-temporal-cingulate structural covariance pattern characterized predominantly by PA alterations, was associated with both SWM strategy performance and depressive symptom severity. These findings identify distributed multimodal structural signatures associated with SIB in MDD and highlight a fronto-temporal-cingulate neural correlate linking cognitive dysfunction with depressive symptom severity.

Damage to the primary visual cortex (V1) causes field defects in conscious vision, yet stimuli in the affected field may still guide saccades and other visuomotor responses ("blindsight"). Chronic blindsight is well documented, but early postlesional saccade profiles to scotoma stimuli remain poorly characterized. We mapped visuomotor functions in two macaques 3 to 4 weeks after a unilateral V1 lesion using a perimetry-like saccade assay up to 35° eccentricity, with analyses of saccade direction and catch-trial baselines. Targets had either unpredictable onset, as in clinical perimetry, or temporally cued onset. With unpredictable onsets, monkeys typically failed to initiate movements toward the affected hemifield, and correct saccades to scotoma targets were rare. Temporal cueing increased saccade initiation toward contralesional targets, including positions meeting conventional criteria for blindness, primarily as delayed saccades with initial misdirection or multistep trajectories. A scotoma-related spatial bias, largely independent of the target, was evident in catch-trial and misdirected saccades, whereas a minority of delayed ("out-of-time") saccades reached toward the target location without meeting the temporal criterion. Fine-grained saccade phenotyping may offer a sensitive marker of residual visuomotor processing after V1 damage in monkeys and, potentially, humans.

In this issue, Sepe et al. (2026) show that after only 2 weeks' recovery from a unilateral lesion of primary visual cortex, macaques show evidence that they can make saccades towards targets in the contralesional visual field when target onset is cued. We propose that the superior colliculus is a strong candidate for the generation of these spared visual responses. We go on to suggest that measuring other components of the orienting response, namely activity in the neck and limb muscles during saccades or pointing movements, could provide confirmatory evidence for a collicular contribution to visual orienting movements in blindsight.

Blindsight is a highly informative phenomenon because it dissociates relatively preserved visual function from subjective awareness, unlike other common experimental paradigms that often confound unawareness with weak or near-absence of perception. We assess recent evidence for early post-lesional blindsight-like behavior in macaques and wonder if reduced saccade rates may alternatively reflect degraded sensory processing or decision criteria. Decisive tests should compare matched Yes/No and two-alternative forced-choice sensitivity using signal-detection theory, potentially aided by reaction-time methods. Establishing genuine early dissociations would enable reversible animal models and more rigorous identification of neural mechanisms specific to awareness rather than visual processing strength.

We welcome Sepe et al'.s careful study of the visual capacities of the macaque in the early period that follows a lesion to primary visual cortex. Blindsight is a central phenomenon in the study of consciousness, for its existence suggests the possibility of unconscious vision, an inference that remains controversial. Here, we suggest that damage to visual cortex may produce not just less vision, but rather a different kind of visual engagement with the environment. Fine-grained saccade phenotyping offers clues not only to how much function remains, but to how post-lesional vision is differently organized.

Blindsight is often described as a chronic ability in which stimuli within a cortically blind field guide behavior without reported awareness. Because most studies examine established deficits, spontaneous recovery, practice, and compensation may already have reshaped performance. Sepe et al. instead assessed visuomotor behavior 3 to 4 weeks after unilateral V1 damage in 2 macaques. Normal saccades to blind-field targets were rare, but responses were structured: temporal cueing increased delayed, inaccurate, and multistep eye movements, while catch trials showed bias toward the scotoma border. These errors indicate residual but poorly calibrated visuomotor processing, consistent with early reweighting of V1-independent circuits, and may inform longitudinal studies and early rehabilitation.

Understanding how guessing, cueing, and response bias interact with residual sensitivity is key to interpreting correctly the behavioral responses that are taken as measures of visual performance and awareness in blindsight. It is crucial for determining the extent to which post-lesion recovery of function is due to changes in decisional processes, as opposed to improved sensitivity due to reorganization of early visual circuitry.

Blindsight is an intriguing phenomenon, in which individuals with damage to the primary visual cortex can adequately respond to visual targets, even though they insist on little or absent awareness of their visual experience. Several questions arise in this context: (i) Is awareness a necessary prerequisite for adaptive and flexible behavior? (ii) Does the phenomenon of blindsight actually exist, or is it a wordplay and rather a matter of residual vision or a peculiar form of seeing? (iii) Do we possess suitable tools for capturing reliable subjective reports and behavioral responses? This is a long-standing yet still highly relevant methodological challenge. (iv) Not to be overlooked, the neural basis of blindsight has not yet been sufficiently elucidated. The matter becomes even more complex when one considers the remarkable potential of the brain for reorganization. Is it, after all, a wise view that one should look before taking the leap?

It is well known that humans and nonhuman primates can retain residual visuomotor abilities following chronic damage to the primary visual cortex (V1), a phenomenon known as blindsight. Sepe et al. investigated the behavior of monkeys with unilateral V1 lesions during a visually guided saccade task in the early post-lesion stage. Their study revealed that recovery initially manifests as atypical behavior, characterized by less accurate saccade trajectories and longer reaction times, while responses were nonetheless reliably triggered by the visual presentation of targets within the scotoma. Such detailed, fine-grained behavioral analyses provide valuable insights into the processes underlying functional recovery following V1 lesions.

Perturbation-based balance training (PBT) is a promising approach for improving reactive balance skills, but the role of the primary motor cortex (M1) remains unclear. This study investigated the role of M1 in short-term PBT combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Thirty-four healthy participants completed a three-session PBT involving surface translations, with anodal, sham, or no-tDCS delivered centered over M1. Electromyography of the tibialis anterior and soleus muscles, along with center of mass (COM) kinematics, were analyzed across long-latency responses (LLR1/LLR2 (reactive phase) and LLR3 (voluntary phase)). Balance improved across all groups, indicated by enhanced COM displacements in backward perturbations and increased COM velocity in LLR3 in forward perturbations. Only the anodal tDCS group showed reduced COM velocity in LLR2 in forward perturbations, heightened LLR1 activity, and decreased onset latency in the tibialis anterior muscle. The different indices of improved performance in forward and backward perturbations likely stem from direction-specific limits of stability. In forward perturbations, reduced reactive COM velocity may reflect stimulation-related improvement, while increased voluntary velocity implies training-only effects. Our findings suggest that tDCS centered over M1 may improve postural recovery by modulating neuromuscular activity, consistent with a contribution of cortical-subcortical communication to reactive balance control.

Musical experience is associated with enhanced auditory abilities, but it remains unclear how these benefits are expressed across different stages of spatial auditory processing. Therefore, we examined participants with and without musical experience using a spatial auditory oddball paradigm with multiple spatial deviations under both unattended and attended conditions. Behavioral performance, event-related potentials, and phase-locking value (PLV)-based functional connectivity were jointly analyzed to characterize spatial auditory processing at behavioral, local neural, and network levels. Participants with musical experience showed higher localization accuracy and faster reaction times. During unattended listening, they exhibited larger mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes and stronger functional connectivity, particularly across frontal, temporal, and parietal-occipital regions, whereas during attended listening, they showed larger P300 amplitudes and enhanced large-scale neural synchronization, particularly between frontal and parietal-occipital regions. Moreover, MMN and P300 amplitudes were significantly associated with behavioral performance, linking these neural responses to spatial auditory ability. Together, these converging findings suggest that musical experience is associated with enhanced sensitivity to spatial auditory changes, more efficient attention-dependent processing, and stronger coordination across distributed brain networks. These findings provide an integrated view of how musical experience shapes spatial auditory processing across different attentional states.

This study examined dynamic resting-state functional connectivity and graph-theoretic measures in 71 patients with left intra-axial tumors (40 left frontal lobe tumors and 31 left temporal lobe tumors) and 53 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Dynamic functional connectivity was estimated across 8 80-s sliding windows, region of interest-to-region of interest Fisher-z connectivity values from 132 atlas regions were harmonized using ComBat, and graph metrics were calculated at a 20% proportional density. The primary within-study comparison was restricted to left frontal lobe tumors and left temporal lobe tumors to avoid the confounding between diagnosis and the public healthy control datasets. In restricted maximum likelihood mixed-effects models with AR(1) within-subject covariance, adjusted for z-scored age, categorical TR, and window, none of the 11 graph metrics showed an overall tumor-location effect (P = 0.219 to 0.928; partial eta-squared < 0.001 to 0.019). However, tumor location-by-window interactions survived correction across 11 metrics for clustering coefficient, transitivity, modularity, and assortativity, at T8, adjusted values were higher in left temporal lobe tumors than left frontal lobe tumors for all 4 metrics. Grade-stratified analyses provided no corrected evidence that grade moderated these temporal location effects, while adjustment for peritumoral edema or standardized log lesion volume did not materially alter the primary tumor-location findings. Secondary comparisons indicated lower integration and altered path-based and centrality measures in tumor groups relative to healthy controls, but diagnosis was partially confounded with acquisition protocol; healthy control-only models identified residual acquisition-batch effects for betweenness centrality and eccentricity after correction. Global connectivity laterality index differences did not survive multiple-comparison correction (minimum q = 0.334) and are interpreted descriptively. These findings distinguish temporally specific topology differences from generalized tumor-location effects and require confirmation in uniformly acquired, clinically characterized cohorts.