Overview
- A package of 26–28 papers and open datasets was published on Nov. 12–13, 2026, making the multimodal basal ganglia atlas and interactive portals available to the research community.
- The atlas profiles about 25.5 million cells across humans, macaques and marmosets — roughly 21 million human cells — and integrates single‑cell gene expression, epigenomic marks, spatial maps and electrophysiology.
- Researchers used the resource to trace genetic risk for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders to specific cells, including a rare HTR7‑expressing neuron subtype linked to schizophrenia and bipolar risk and spiny projection neurons enriched for schizophrenia variants.
- The teams released tools and archives such as the NeMO Archive, Human Basal Ganglia Epigenome Atlas, Human Brain Epigenome Atlas and the EpiBRAIN predictive model to help map noncoding variants to cell types and to prioritize experimental targets.
- The studies also chart developmental trajectories and age‑related changes in basal ganglia cells and report a promising, less invasive gene‑therapy approach in animal models while stressing that clinical translation will require years of experimental validation.