Neural circuits are fundamental to the brain's ability to receive sensory inputs, perform computations, and generate appropriate behavioral responses. Investigating neural circuits is a central focus of neuroscience research, as it helps us to understand how the brain processes information, generates behavior, and carries out cognitive functions. The field has made remarkable progress in understanding the nervous system. We predict a substantial acceleration of our understanding of the nervous system, which may foster the development of new therapeutic strategies to treat diseases over the forthcoming decades.
The Research Topic serves as a repository of the research presentations and communications at the 2023 summer conference titled “Structure, function and development of neural circuits” (21–23 August 2023), co-sponsored by the Cajal Club, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the UC Irvine Center for Neural Circuit Mapping. The main Conference was held at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering near the UC Irvine campus located in the beautiful city of Irvine in Southern California. Additional workshops were held on the UCI campus. In this front-of-the-field conference, leaders and attendees from diverse institutions presented their research progress and technology advancements and brought unique perspectives to the theme of integrating the different facets of neural circuits—structure, function, development, and disease.
This Research Topic welcomed all article types, including research reports, method papers, and reviews and perspectives related to studying the aspects of structure, function, and development of neural circuits in health and disease. All conference participants were encouraged to submit their work to the Research Topic; the Research Topic was also open to non-conference attendees who were interested.
The Research Topic's co-editors included Dr. Christine Gall of the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Sandra Jurado of the Institute of Neurosciences of Spanish National Research Council, Dr. Orkide O Koyuncu of the University of California, Irvine, and Dr. Xiangmin Xu of the University of California, Irvine. We thank all the authors for their efforts leading to a nice Research Topic collection, including the nine manuscripts listed below.
Statements
Author contributions
XX: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Summary
Keywords
neural circuits, cell types, circuit development, systems neuroscience, developmental disorders, connectivity, viral genetic tool development
Citation
Xu X (2025) Editorial: Structure, function and development of neural circuits. Front. Neural Circuits 19:1573101. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2025.1573101
Received
08 February 2025
Accepted
25 February 2025
Published
11 March 2025
Volume
19 - 2025
Edited and reviewed by
Qian-Quan Sun, University of Wyoming, United States
Updates
Copyright
© 2025 Xu.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Xiangmin Xu xiangmin.xu@uci.edu
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.