IMBB and NYU researchers joined forces to study how the brain conveys important environmental cues and contexts such as novelty and reward information. Using dendritic electrophysiology recordings, optogenetic circuit mapping, and multi-compartment computational modeling they uncovered a disinhibitory microcircuit that gates dendritic spikes in hippocampal pyramidal neurons driven by lateral entorhinal cortex inputs. These inputs are among the first to be affected in Alzheimer's disease.