The yellow-crowned brush-tailed rat is an arboreal rodent of western Amazon lowland forest. It nests in flooded forest and river floodplains.
It has a pale crown patch and two dark lines from the forehead toward the nape. Its soft fur is yellowish brown and not spiny, and its tail is bushy like a bottlebrush.
It lives in seasonally flooded lowland forest and river floodplains, nesting in large tree holes, especially in palms, and using the canopy.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.