Animal Behavior and Cognition

Evaluation Summary:

This paper builds on a previously published computational model of the insect central complex developed to generate a biologically plausible neural circuit for producing visually guided navigation behavior to show how the same model can be used to produce navigation behavior in response to multimodal sensory information. In particular, the authors show that olfactory navigation as well as wind-guided navigation can be seamlessly integrated with visual behaviors. The work is significant, valuable and of broad interest to circuit and computational neuroscientists.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

Olfactory coding is still an open question in neuroscience. Therefore, this paper is of potential interest to a broad audience of neuroscientists. It undertakes a thorough investigation of how olfactory sensory neurons drive avoidance or attraction in flies and also addresses how combinations of active ORNs can become behaviorally meaningful. It has great potential value for clarifying how animals map sensory input to valence.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

The authors show that a widely arborizing inhibitory interneuron AL reduces the variability of olfactory responses in at Drosophila Kenyon postsynapses in the mushroom body calyx, which receive inputs from the projection neurons (PNs) in the antennal lobe. The data support a model in which APL neurons, which also receive inputs from PNs, mediate scaled GABAergic feedback to normalize of postsynaptic responses in the calyx. The conclusions, based on detailed analysis of one odorant are mostly well supported by the data.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This study gives us information about the potential of the endocannabinoid system to become a novel target for the treatment of Williams-Beuren syndrome. The authors found there is an alteration of brain cannabinoid type-1 receptor (CB1R) in a mouse model of Williams-Beuren syndrome (CD mice). Modulation of CB1R by JZL184 treatment improved social and cognitive phenotypes and also cardiac function of CD mice. This study will be of great interest to researchers and clinicians in the field of genetic diseases.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper is of potential interest to a broad audience of neuroscientists. By concluding that fear conditioning does not occur in a semi-naturalistic experimental setup, the study implies a major adjustment in our current understanding of Pavlovian fear conditioning and associative learning. However, additional controls and data analyses are required to validate the authors' conclusions.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

Chen et al. trained male and female animals on an explore/exploit (2-armed bandit) task. Despite similar levels of accuracy in these animals, authors report higher levels of exploration in male than in female mice. The patterns of exploration were analyzed in fine-grained detail, with the addition of computational modeling: males are less likely to stop exploring once exploring is initiated, whereas females stop exploring once they learn. The results are of broad interest to those interested is sex differences in learning. Inclusion of more primary behavioral data and further justification of the models and parameters is needed to clarify data presentation and interpretation.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper is based on digital reconstruction of a serial EM stack of a larva of the annelid Platynereis and presents a complete 3D map of all desmosomes between somatic muscle cells and their attachment partners. This resource is of interest to scientists in several fields: motor control, high-resolution anatomy, and network analyses. With the first comprehensive and complete mapping of muscle-to-body connectivity through desmosomes in an annelid larva, it has the potential to close a missing link and make progress towards understanding in a "holistic" way how a complex neural circuitry controls an equally complex pattern of movement/behavior.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper uses controlled exposure to territorial intrusion to show that repeated exposure to conflict between groups compromises fitness in social fish. With a host of results relating to fertility, behavior, and parental investment, its findings will increase confidence in the argument that intergroup conflict is an important factor in social evolution. There are several statistical issues that should be addressed to minimize the possibility of false-positive results.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper will be of interest across psychology and ecology. It attempts to replicate influential findings that imply Theory of Mind in food-caching decisions of Eurasian Jays. The authors' approach to both attempting to expand on and replicate earlier findings is both rigorous and thoroughly contextualized. The failure to reproduce earlier findings raises important questions for the field.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper on echolocation-mediated responses to prey movements will be of interest to a broad audience, including ethologists and neuroscientists as well as those more generally interested in the natural world. Its strengths come from the use of data from both wild and captive animals of different species of toothed whales, as well as trained harbour porpoises, enabling generalization of the findings and conclusions on sensory-motor feedback.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)