Climate change is driven by individual behaviour, yet little is known about how people make environmental choices. Environmental decision neuroscience examines the neural processes behind consequential climate-relevant decisions, and has revealed three core mechanisms that are beginning to crystallize as central to sustainable action.

In this Journal Club, Arjen Boender describes a 2017 study that showed that diffusible peptidergic signals coordinate behaviour in Trichoplax adhaerens, a tiny marine animal that lacks a nervous system.

The dynamic and versatile architecture of the neuronal endoplasmic reticulum (ER) enables it to support a wide range of functions. In this Review, Carvalhais, Kole and Kuijpers describe the mechanisms that shape ER morphology and its contributions to specific local functions within neuronal subcellular domains.

Connectome reconstructions across multiple species reveal that the morphology of axonal projections is highly variable, even between neurons of the same location or subtype. In this Review, Richards et al. discuss the implications of this for interareal communication and for functional network plasticity in both the healthy brain and following brain injury.

In this Journal Club, Lihua Ye highlights a 2016 paper that characterized the vagal sensory neuron subtypes that transmit different sensory signals from the digestive tract, advancing our understanding of gut–brain communication.

In mice, the sensory neurons that innervate the skeleton signal via FGF9 to promote bone repair after fracture.

Climate change is driven by individual behaviour, yet little is known about how people make environmental choices. Environmental decision neuroscience examines the neural processes behind consequential climate-relevant decisions, and has revealed three core mechanisms that are beginning to crystallize as central to sustainable action.

In this Journal Club, Arjen Boender describes a 2017 study that showed that diffusible peptidergic signals coordinate behaviour in Trichoplax adhaerens, a tiny marine animal that lacks a nervous system.