Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This important technical development for neural circuit tracing in larval zebrafish consists in an enhanced rabies virus for improved retrograde transneuronal tracing, supporting a new method for combined structural and functional brain mapping which is demonstrated with compelling evidence. The work will interest zebrafish neurobiologists for the identification of neuronal connectivity patterns while simultaneously monitoring circuit activity.

eLife Assessment

In this valuable study, de Vries and colleagues aim to determine how the perception of biological motion is organized at the neural level, specifically testing whether this process rests on hierarchical predictive processing by extending a methodological framework that the authors previously published. The evidence is solid for the empirical claim that neural representations of body motion systematically lead the stimulus in time, with simulations validating the regression approach and consistent effects on both peak magnitude and peak latency. Support for the stronger theoretical interpretation that these signatures specifically reflect active hierarchical predictive inference requires further substantiation, since the design and analysis do not distinguish such inference from cached associative retrieval or from nonlinear temporal integration of slowly varying features.

eLife Assessment

This study presents analyses of single neuron activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of monkeys performing a decision-making task that manipulates both perceptual evidence and reward. The study shows convincing evidence of distinct subpopulations of neurons in STN that differ in their representations of key quantities related to decision formation. These findings reveal important functional heterogeneity within the STN that helps provide new insights into its contributions to decision processing.

eLife Assessment

The authors present a solid study in the unique conditions of weightlessness providing evidence that movements carried out in 0g are underactuated. They further provide a thorough discussion based on computational modelling to address the question as to whether the CNS underestimates mass when programming movements in weightlessness. In all cases, the persistence of the observed effects in weightlessness has important implications for theories of motor adaptation.

eLife Assessment

By investigating spine nanostructure and dynamics across multiple genetic mouse models for neurodevelopmental disorders, this important study has the potential to uncover convergent or divergent synaptic phenotypes that may be specifically associated with autism versus schizophrenia risk. The imaging and overall breadth of the methods are convincing. The purely in vitro nature of the study slightly limits the generalisability of the findings.

eLife Assessment

This study by Roseby and colleagues shows that region-specific mechanosensation - especially anterior-dorsal inputs - controls larval self-righting, and links this to Hox gene function in sensory neurons. The work is important for understanding how body plan cues shape sensorimotor behaviour, and the experimental toolkit will be of use to others. The strength of evidence is compelling with respect to the assays developed and the involvement of the anterior region, the evidence is more limited with respect to the dorso-ventral organization of sensory inputs in that region and the mechanism by which Hox genes contribute to the process. These findings will be of broad interest to researchers studying neural circuits, developmental genetics, and the evolution of behaviour.

eLife Assessment

This important manuscript presents the Crunchometer, an open-source and low-cost acoustic system for high-resolution quantification of biting and chewing in mice. The work addresses a need for reliable measures of food consumption and feeding microstructure, and the tool has broad relevance for studies of ingestive behavior, appetite circuits, hypothalamic function, and pharmacological interventions. The evidence supporting the methodological advance is convincing, and the Crunchometer outputs were carefully validated against human observer scoring, reliably distinguished biting and chewing events, and captured changes in feeding behavior across different foods, physiological states, and semaglutide treatment. The study also demonstrates that the system can reveal biologically meaningful features of feeding, including meal structure, bite and chew dynamics, and altered consumption patterns after pharmacological manipulation. A significant additional contribution is the identification of previously unrecognized meal-related neurons in the lateral hypothalamus, providing novel circuit-level insight into solid food consumption and naturalistic feeding behavior. Although some neuroscience conclusions remain more preliminary than the methodological validation, the study provides strong evidence for the utility of the Crunchometer and will be of interest to researchers studying ingestive behavior, hypothalamic circuits, and metabolic regulation.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study characterizes the emergence of the membrane-associated periodic cytoskeleton (MPS) in the axons of human motor neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. Super-resolution imaging of beta-II spectrin provides convincing evidence for the patterned assembly of spectrin-poor gaps and spectrin-rich MPS in the medial region of the axons and its enhancement by the kinase inhibitor staurosporine. The data advocates against gap formation by axonal degeneration or cytoskeleton disassembly in a continuous MPS. Instead, a continuous MPS may result from nascent MPS patches and their maturation, a model that would benefit from live imaging for validation.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript describes convincing and very interesting findings that substantially advance our understanding of a major research question on the role of Cx32 hemichannels in the Schwann cell paranode. It provides an interdisciplinary integration of imaging, in silico approaches, and functional data. This important study proposes a new mechanism with profound physiological relevance and provides new insights into glial modulation of electrical conduction in sensory/motor myelinated nerves.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides new insights into the neuronal dynamics of the locus coeruleus in relation to hippocampal sharp-wave ripples. Using high-temporal-resolution, multi-site electrophysiological recordings in rats, the authors present convincing evidence that ripples and locus coeruleus activity are inversely correlated to levels of arousal and noradrenaline tone is modulated by hippocampo-cortical coupling. Overall, the work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying large-scale brain coordination and memory processes.