Neuroscience

Neural basis of cognitive control signals in anterior cingulate cortex during delay discounting

1. Jeremy K Seamans
2. Shelby White
3. Mitchell Morningstar
4. Eldon Emberly
5. David Linsenbardt
6. Baofeng Ma
7. Cristine L Czachowski
8. Christopher C Lapish

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors studied cognitive control signals in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while rats selected between small immediate and larger delayed rewards. The description of behavioral strategies related to value-tracking signals in ACC is potentially useful. The evidence in support of this finding is incomplete due to issues with the task design, analyses, and modeling.

Reviewed by eLife

Characterisation of cold-selective lamina I spinal projection neurons

1. Aimi N Razlan
2. Wenhui Ma
3. Allen C Dickie
4. Erika Polgár
5. Anna McFarlane
6. Mansi Yadav
7. Andrew H Cooper
8. Douglas Strathdee
9. Masahiko Watanabe
10. Andrew M Bell
11. Andrew J Todd
12. Junichi Hachisuka

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study offers valuable insights into the anatomical and physiological features of cold-selective lamina I spinal projection neurons. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is compelling, although including a larger sample size and more quantification would have strengthened the study further, and the claims of monosynaptic connectivity would benefit from being stated more cautiously. The work will interest those in the field of somatosensory biology, especially researchers studying spinal cord dorsal horn circuits and projection neuron cell types.

Reviewed by eLife

Linear and categorical coding units in the mouse gustatory cortex drive population dynamics and behavior in taste decision-making

1. Liam Lang
2. Camelia Yuejiao Zheng
3. Jennifer M Blackwell
4. Giancarlo La Camera
5. Alfredo Fontanini

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work advances our understanding of the single neuron coding types in the mouse gustatory cortex and the functional roles of these neurons for perceptual decision-making. The conclusions are based on compelling evidence from rigorous behavioral experiments, high-density electrophysiology, sophisticated data analysis, and neural network modeling with in silico perturbations of functionally-identified units. This work will be of broad interest to systems neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife

Reactivation-coupled brain stimulation enables complete learning generalization

1. Yibo Xie
2. Minmin Wang
3. Yuan Gao
4. Baoyu Wu
5. Shaomin Zhang
6. Mengyuan Gong
7. Zoe Kourtzi
8. Ke Jia

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study shows that combining reactivation-based training with anodal tDCS yields an unusually broad generalization of visual perceptual learning, while preserving robust learning gains and markedly reducing total training time. Although the empirical evidence is solid, the proposed mechanistic account, i.e., the GABA modulation, disrupted offline consolidation and reduced perceptual overfitting, remains insufficiently substantiated, as these assumptions lack direct neurochemical support, and several alternative behavioral explanations and necessary control comparisons have not been fully addressed. The work will be of broad interest to researchers investigating brain plasticity, perceptual learning, and rehabilitation training.

Reviewed by eLife

Complimentary vertebrate Wac models exhibit phenotypes relevant to DeSanto-Shinawi Syndrome

1. Kang-Han Lee
2. April M Stafford
3. Maria Pacheco-Vergara
4. Karol Cichewicz
5. Cesar P Canales
6. Nicolas Seban
7. Melissa Corea
8. Darlene Rahbarian
9. Kelly E. Bonekamp
10. Grant R. Gillie
11. Dariangelly Pacheco Cruz
12. Alyssa M Gill
13. Hye-Eun Hwang
14. Katie L Uhl
15. Tara E Jager
16. Marwan Shinawi
17. Xiaopeng Li
18. Andre Obenaus
19. Shane Crandall
20. Juhee Jeong
21. Alex Nord
22. Cheol-Hee Kim
23. Daniel Vogt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study establishes the first vertebrate models of DeSanto-Shinawi Syndrome, revealing conserved craniofacial and social and behavioral phenotypes across mouse and zebrafish that mirror key clinical features. The solid evidence is supported by behavioral, anatomical, and molecular analyses of Wac animal mutants that broadly support the authors' claims, though additional mechanistic investigation would strengthen the conclusions. This study sets a baseline for future mechanistic studies and reports a platform to test approaches to reverse phenotypes.

Reviewed by eLife

Verbal Episodic Processing in Newborns

1. Emma Visibelli
2. Ana Fló
3. Eugenio Baraldi
4. Silvia Benavides-Varela

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study reports solid evidence for early verbal episodic memory formation. The findings demonstrate that speaker identity is a crucial feature, enabling episodic-like memories from birth, and will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists working on brain development, memory, language learning and social cognition.

Reviewed by eLife

Spectral decomposition of local field potentials uncovers frequency-tuned gain modulation of working memory in primate visual system

1. Majid Roshanaei
2. Mohammad Reza Daliri
3. Zahra Bahmani
4. Kelsey Clark
5. Behrad Noudoost

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study offers a valuable contribution to understanding how working memory (WM) shapes neural processing in extrastriate cortex. By applying spectral decomposition to LFP recordings from primate middle temporal area (MT) during a spatial WM task, the authors show that lower-frequency components (theta, alpha, and beta, but not gamma or high-gamma) correlate with trial-by-trial gain modulation of visually evoked responses. However, certain aspects of the gain-modulation and statistical analyses are incomplete. A clearer and more comprehensive description of these components would substantially strengthen the manuscript.

Reviewed by eLife

Impaired excitability of fast-spiking neurons in a novel mouse model of KCNC1 epileptic encephalopathy

1. Eric R Wengert
2. Sophie R Liebergall
3. Teresa Jimenez
4. Melody A Cheng
5. Kelly H Markwalter
6. Jerome Clatot
7. Yerahm Hong
8. Leroy Arias
9. Eric D Marsh
10. Xiaohong Zhang
11. Theodoros Tsetsenis
12. Ala Somarowthu
13. Naiara Akizu
14. Ethan M Goldberg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important evidence for the mechanism underlying KCNC1-related developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. The authors have generated and characterized a new knock-in mouse with a pathogenic mutation found in patients to determine the synaptic and circuit mechanisms contributing to KCNC1-associated epilepsy. They provide convincing evidence for reduced excitability of parvalbumin-positive fast-spiking interneurons, but not in neighboring excitatory neurons, and suggest that this may contribute to seizures and premature death in the mice.

Reviewed by eLife

Barcode activity in a recurrent network model of the hippocampus enables efficient memory binding

1. Ching Fang
2. Jack Lindsey
3. Larry F Abbott
4. Dmitriy Aronov
5. Selmaan Chettih

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of episodic memory by proposing a biologically plausible mechanism through which hippocampal barcode activity enables efficient memory binding and flexible recall. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, with rigorously validated computational models and alignment with experimental findings. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and computational modelers studying memory and hippocampal function.

Reviewed by eLife

WAChRs are excitatory opsins sensitive to indoor lighting

1. Amanda J. Tose
2. Alberto A. Nava
3. Sara N. McGrath
4. Alan R. Mardinly
5. Alexander Naka

Reviewed by PREreview, Arcadia Science