Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

The paper reports the important discovery that the mouse dorsal inferior colliculus, an auditory midbrain area, encodes sound location. The evidence supporting the claims is solid, being supported by both optical and electrophysiological recordings. The observations described should be of interest to auditory researchers studying the neural mechanisms of sound localization and the role of noise correlations in population coding.

eLife Assessment

This useful work reveals differential activity to food and shock outcomes in central amygdala GABAergic neurons. Solid evidence supports claims of unconditioned stimulus activity that changes with learning. However, the evidence regarding claims related to valence or salience signaling in these neurons is inadequate. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying sensory processing and learning in the amygdala.

eLife Assessment

This important study reveals that Excitatory Amino Acid Transporters play a role in chromatic information processing in the retina. The combination of (double) mutants, behavioral assays, immunohistochemistry, and electroretinograms provides solid evidence supporting the appropriately conservative conclusions. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists working on color vision or retinal processing.

eLife Assessment

This important study explores the neural basis for a well known auditory illusion, often utilized in movie soundtracks, in which a sequence of two complex tones can be perceived as either rising or falling in pitch depending on the context in which they are presented. Convincing single-neuron data and analyses are presented to show that correlates of these pitch-direction changes are found in the ferret primary auditory cortex. While these findings provide an interesting link between cortical activity and perception, the manuscript could be clearer on the wider implications of the failure of traditional decoding models to account for these results.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable findings on changes in neuronal alpha activity elicited by prolonged pain in healthy human participants. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors, however, is incomplete and would benefit from clarifications of analytical strategies, additional statistical analyses, and shaping of the interpretations. With the methodological and interpretative parts strengthened, the work will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating the brain mechanisms of pain to identify new approaches to pain treatment

eLife Assessment

This study provides a valuable perspective on visual cortex architecture by identifying two cortical gradients that change across the lifespan and have distinct functional and structural features. The first gradient captures well-mapped variations in cortical thickness and myelination markers from early sensory to higher-order cortex, while the second gradient shows divergence in these measures with a more localized structure, notably predicting a previously unknown cluster of visual field maps in the anterior temporal lobe. The large-scale lifespan data are compelling, but the evidence overall is incomplete with key questions around methodical checks and implementation, the standard of evidence for the new visual maps, and how the gradient model relates to sharp tissue boundaries parcellating the cortex.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study builds on previous work by the authors by presenting a potentially key method for correcting optical aberrations in GRIN lens-based micro endoscopes used for imaging deep brain regions. By combining simulations and experiments, the authors show that the obtained field of view is significantly increased with corrected, versus uncorrected microendoscopes. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although some aspects of the manuscript should be clarified and missing information provided. Because the approach described in this paper does not require any microscope or software modifications, it can be readily adopted by neuroscientists who wish to image neuronal activity deep in the brain.

eLife Assessment

This valuable work explores the timely idea that aperiodic activity in human electrophysiology recordings shows changes in response to task events, which may be relevant for performance, and that these changes could be misinterpreted as oscillatory changes. While it is a timely and interesting topic in principle, in the present form, the analytic approach is incomplete. Further, the data offer inadequate support for the conclusions related to theta without demonstrations that the task evokes theta power. Impressions were split, but there was consensus that the Discussion should be tempered and that further revisions could improve the manuscript.

eLife Assessment

This important work advances our understanding of parabrachial CGRP threat function. The evidence supporting CGRP aversive outcome signaling is solid, while the evidence for cue signaling and fear behavior generation is incomplete. The work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying defensive behaviors.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a valuable new perspective on how motor learning occurring in one state generalizes to new states (for example, a different limb posture). The proposed model improves upon previous theories in its ability to predict patterns of generalization, but evidence supporting this specific proposed model over possible alternatives is incomplete. The newly proposed theory appears promising but would be more convincing if its conceptual and theoretical basis were clearer and more rigorously derived.