The lower-level retinotopic visual cortex of humans born without the optic chiasm comprises two independent neuronal populations and forms a versatile model for quantifying the relationship between the fMRI BOLD signal and neural response.

Secreted Vax1 homeodomain protein supports the development of optic chiasm by directly acting at the retinal ganglion cell axon.

Retinal ganglion cell axons release the morphogen sonic hedgehog which signals through astrocytes to induce the migration of inhibitory interneurons into the developing visual thalamus.

Terminally differentiated neurons and glia can re-enter the cell cycle to become polyploid in the adult fly brain, to protect cells from DNA damage-associated death.

Building on previous work (Felch et al., 2016), it is shown that inverse effectiveness, a central property of multisensory integration, in the optic tectum is mediated by the activation of NMDA-type glutamate receptors, resulting in a response greater than the sum of responses to each individual sensory modality.

The fly connectome reveals dedicated cell types for processing specific kinds of visual information such as color or skylight polarization.

New open-source software enables, for the first time, extraction of quantitative information from brain dissection photographs that are routinely taken at brain banks for archiving purposes but otherwise not exploited.

During embryonic development, tissue stiffness, which provides an important signal to motile cells, changes locally within tens of minutes in a well-controlled manner.

Dystroglycan interacts with multiple partners, including the transmembrane receptor Celsr3, to regulate axon tract formation throughout the developing nervous system.

The protocol reported can open the way to investigation of the effects of a variety of sensory stimulations on brain activity in embryo.