Animal Behavior and Cognition

An 8-cage imaging system for automated analyses of mouse behavior

1. Thaís Del Rosario Hernández
2. Narendra R. Joshi
3. Sayali V. Gore
4. Jill A. Kreiling
5. Robbert Creton

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Automated scoring of nematode nictation on a textured background

1. Patrick D. McClanahan
2. Luca Golinelli
3. Tuan Anh Le
4. Liesbet Temmerman

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Anemonefish have finer color discrimination in the ultraviolet

1. Laurie J. Mitchell
2. Amelia Phelan
3. Fabio Cortesi
4. N. Justin Marshall
5. Wen-sung Chung
6. Daniel C. Osorio
7. Karen L. Cheney

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper studies color vision in anemonefish. The central conclusion of the paper is that anemonefish use signals from their UV cones to discriminate colors that would not otherwise be distinguishable; this differs from other fish in which UV cones extend the range of wavelengths of sensitivity but do not add a dimension to color vision. The work fits into a rich history of studies investigating how color vision fits into an animal's ecological niche. At the same time, the manuscript needs to more clearly establish and convey the degree to which each conclusion is supported by the data and where the limits of certainty lie.

Reviewed by eLife

Inferring sources of suboptimality in perceptual decision making using a causal inference task

1. Sabyasachi Shivkumar
2. Madeline S. Cappelloni
3. Ross K. Maddox
4. Ralf M. Haefner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study of human perceptual decision-making provides important insights into the sources of suboptimality in human inference. The authors provide solid evidence by combining psychophysics in an audiovisual causal inference task with detailed modeling of the observed behavior. Additional control analyses should be carried out to validate the identifiability of distinct suboptimalities using the authors' modeling framework, and the generalizability of their findings in other conditions should be tested or discussed more explicitly.

Reviewed by eLife

Continuous, long-term crawling behavior characterized by a robotic transport system

1. James Yu
2. Stephanie Dancausse
3. Maria Paz
4. Tolu Faderin
5. Melissa Gaviria
6. Joseph W Shomar
7. Dave Zucker
8. Vivek Venkatachalam
9. Mason Klein

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study describes a useful method to monitor the behavior of Drosophila larvae in a uniform environment over much longer time scales than was possible with previous methods. The authors provide a solid characterization of aspects of the method and show that the behavior of single larvae can be quantified over several hours. The experiments offer a proof-of-concept for a robotic device that will enable the investigation of behavior in long-term experiments in ways that were previously unimaginable.

Reviewed by eLife

Age-related differences in prefrontal glutamate are associated with increased working memory decay that gives the appearance of learning deficits

1. Milena Rmus
2. Mingjian He
3. Beth Baribault
4. Edward G Walsh
5. Elena K Festa
6. Anne GE Collins
7. Matthew R Nassar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study combines behavior, computational modelling and magnetic resonance spectroscopy to address the question whether age-related declines in learning are driven by declines in working memory or deficiencies of the RL system. The general approach is solid, but the presented evidence to support the papers' main claims could be stronger. With additional analyses and adaptation of the main claims, the paper could be of high interest for researchers in the field of cognitive aging and decision making.

Reviewed by eLife

Behavioral dissection of hunger states in Drosophila

1. Kristina J Weaver
2. Sonakshi Raju
3. Rachel A Rucker
4. Tuhin Chakraborty
5. Robert A Holt
6. Scott D Pletcher

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important paper advances our ability to understand feeding behavior in fruit flies and begins to address the challenging question of motivation. With innovative methods based on the detailed monitoring of interactions between foods of different qualities at different hunger states, they present compelling evidence for non-homeostatic feeding not driven by metabolic need.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid, automated, and experimenter-free touchscreen testing reveals reciprocal interactions between cognitive flexibility and activity-based anorexia in female rats

1. Kaixin Huang
2. Laura K Milton
3. Harry Dempsey
4. Stephen J Power
5. Kyna-Anne Conn
6. Zane B Andrews
7. Claire J Foldi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable manuscript describes a fully automated touchscreen cognitive testing system for rats that reduces the length of training required to learn a task and eliminates the need for daily handling. These features make it possible to assess cognitive behaviors in conjunction with other neurobehavioral paradigms during adolescence, an important advance in the field. The data convincingly show that cognitive flexibility does not promote susceptibility to severe weight loss in the activity-based anorexia (ABA) paradigm. However, support for the claim that cognitive deficits seen in rats that had been exposed ABA adequately capture an important clinical feature of the pathophysiology of anorexia nervosa is incompletely supported.

Reviewed by eLife

The functional form of value normalization in human reinforcement learning

1. Sophie Bavard
2. Stefano Palminteri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  It is well established that valuation and value-based decision making is context-dependent, but the exact form of normalization has remained an open question. This study provides compelling evidence that values during reward learning are normalized based on the range of available values. These findings will be important for researchers interested in reward learning and decision-making.

Reviewed by eLife

Tyramine and its Amtyr1 receptor modulate attention in honey bees (Apis mellifera)

1. Joseph S Latshaw
2. Reece E Mazade
3. Mary Petersen
4. Julie A Mustard
5. Irina Sinakevitch
6. Lothar Wissler
7. Xiaojiao Guo
8. Chelsea Cook
9. Hong Lei
10. Jürgen Gadau
11. Brian Smith

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment:

  This article reports the fundamental discovery that interfering with the function of the tyramine receptor causes a rapid decline in responses to olfactory stimuli in the honey bee. While tyramine signaling might specifically control the process of latent inhibition without affecting appetitive conditioning, the present analysis is incomplete in terms of ruling out the possibility that tyramine affects other functions of the antennal lobe. Nonetheless, compelling data highlight the role of one of the most highly expressed biogenic amine receptors in the insect olfactory system.

Reviewed by eLife