Neuroscience

Brain-Cognitive Gaps in relation to Dopamine and Health-related Factors: Insights from AI-Driven Functional Connectome Predictions

1. Morteza Esmaeili
2. Erin Bjørkeli
3. Robin Pedersen
4. Farshad Falahati
5. Jarkko Johansson
6. Kristin Nordin
7. Nina Karalija
8. Lars Bäckman
9. Lars Nyberg
10. Alireza Salami

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This multimodal neuroimaging study leverages fMRI, PET, and deep learning to predict memory performance. The authors introduce the brain-cognition gap to link these different imaging modalities to cognition and evaluate their results in two independent cohorts. The results are solid and provide an important contribution to the literature and will be of interest to neuroscientists working at the interface of cognition, neuroimaging.

Reviewed by eLife

Thalamo-accumbal circuit adaptations following extended oxycodone abstinence

1. Yanaira Alonso-Caraballo
2. Yan Li
3. Nicholas J Constantino
4. Megan A Neal
5. Gillian S Driscoll
6. Yunona Manasian
7. Grace K Cai
8. Maria Mavrikaki
9. Vadim Y Bolshakov
10. Elena H Chartoff

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable manuscript by Alonso-Caraballo et al is a novel piece of work that examines the impact of oxycodone self-administration on neural plasticity within paraventricular thalamic (PVT) to nucleus accumbens shell (Shell) pathway - two regions shown to play a key role in cue-induced drug seeking on their own - and whether this plasticity varies based on abstinence period and biological sex. Data show that a clinically relevant long-access model of self-administration promotes dependence in both male and female rats and provide compelling data that when compared to current literature indicate that craving-induced relapse for opioids may develop faster and may be more pronounced in females compared to males. In addition to these behavioral findings, the authors provide the first evidence that glutamate signaling within the PVT-to-Shell pathway is selectively strengthened at the output medium spiny neurons by opioids following protracted, but not acute abstinence. These data highlight a potential role for these adaptations in relapse behavior and identify a potential therapeutic target during abstinence to reduce relapse risk in abstaining individuals.

Reviewed by eLife

Excitation–inhibition balance controls coupling stability and network reorganization in a plastic Kuramoto model

1. Satoshi Kuroki
2. Kenji Mizuseki

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study investigates how plasticity and homeostatic adaptation can lead to the emergence of synchronization patterns associated with different sleep phases. The ideas are novel and interesting, but the evidence at present remains incomplete. Further work is needed to determine whether the reported states persist for larger system sizes, longer integration times, and how robust the results are to different initial conditions.

Reviewed by eLife

Visual Attention in The Fovea and The Periphery during Visual Search

1. Jie Zhang
2. Xiaocang Zhu
3. Shanshan Wang
4. Zhengyu Ma
5. Hossein Esteky
6. Yonghong Tian
7. Robert Desimone
8. Huihui Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study reports important and invaluable findings that advance understanding of how attention is distributed between what we look at directly and what lies outside the center of gaze during active visual search. The evidence supporting the main claims is solid, with a large and rich dataset spanning multiple brain areas, although some aspects of the interpretation would benefit from additional controls and clearer separation of attention from eye-movement planning. The work will be of particular interest to researchers studying attention, visual perception, and eye movements behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Frequency and Laminar Profile of Feature Specific Visual Activity Revealed by Interleaved EEG-fMRI

1. Tommy Clausner
2. José P Marques
3. René Scheeringa
4. Mathilde Bonnefond

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study uses simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings to shed light on the relationship between alpha and gamma oscillations and specific cortical layers. The sophisticated methodology provides compelling evidence for correlations between oscillatory power and the strength and contents of fMRI signals in different cortical layers. This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying the role and mechanisms of alpha and gamma oscillations.

Reviewed by eLife

Zapit: Open Source Laser-Scanning Photostimulation For Neuroscience

1. Michael Lohse
2. Oliver M Gauld
3. Maja T Quigley
4. Ainiah Masood
5. Chaofei Bao
6. Jingjie Li
7. Nathaniel J Miska
8. Gerion Nabbefeld
9. Quentin Pajot-Moric
10. Simon Townsend
11. Peter Vincent
12. Angela Y Yang
13. Nikolaos Zervogiannis
14. Athena Akrami
15. Chunyu A Duan
16. Jeffrey C Erlich
17. Sonja B Hofer
18. Thomas D Mrsic-Flogel
19. Philip Coen
20. Robert AA Campbell

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents a software and hardware suite for targeted photostimulation that can be used in vivo. The package is a well-designed and documented hardware/software suite with a comprehensive build guide. This tool will likely promote important neuroscience advances through targeted real-time perturbation of the cerebral cortex. Overall, this manuscript makes a compelling case on how to design and make available power tools for the research community.

Reviewed by eLife

The openretina Project: Collaborative Retina Modelling Across Datasets and Species

1. Federico D’Agostino
2. Thomas Zenkel
3. Baptiste Lorenzi
4. Michaela Vystrčilová
5. Dominic Gonschorek
6. Samuel Suhai
7. Samuele Virgili
8. Alexander S Ecker
9. Olivier Marre
10. Larissa Höfling
11. Thomas Euler
12. Matthias Bethge

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents openretina, an open-source platform that integrates retinal datasets, model training, benchmarking, and in silico analysis tools within a unified framework. The resource is valuable because it addresses long-standing challenges in reproducibility, accessibility, and cross-study comparison in computational retina research, while providing a foundation for community-driven model development and evaluation. The supporting evidence is solid, with the authors demonstrating a functional and well-documented platform across multiple datasets and species, although a clearer discussion of model interpretability, current performance limitations, and data quality standards would strengthen the resource.

Reviewed by eLife

Neurons, Muscles, and Venom: Elucidating a Neural-to-Secretory Pathway in Cephalopod Predation

1. Kim N. Kirchhoff
2. José Ramón Pardos-Blas
3. Amy Courtney
4. Belkes Stambouli
5. Andrew L. Sugarman
6. Daniel J. Vanselow
7. Melvin Williams
8. Christian Carrasco
9. Mariam Gelashvilli
10. Cecilia Cuddy
11. Praveena Naidu
12. William R. Schafer
13. Keith C. Cheng
14. Eve Seuntjens
15. Mandë Holford

Reviewed by Review Commons

Symmetric brain-liver circuits mediate lateralized regulation of hepatic glucose output in mice

1. Zhonglong Wang
2. Xiangfei Gong
3. Li Jiang
4. Ke Wang
5. Xinyuan Sun
6. Yingxi Li
7. Mengtong Ran
8. Yanshen Chen
9. Hongdong Wang
10. Xuehui Chu
11. Shun Wang
12. Junjie Wang
13. Xiao Zheng
14. Haiping Hao
15. Hao Xie

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study combines anatomical tracing, tissue clearing, and functional manipulations to demonstrate lateralized brainstem control of hepatic glucose metabolism and identify a site of sympathetic nerve crossover supplying the liver. The evidence supporting the anatomical organization of hepatic sympathetic innervation is compelling, and the functional studies provide solid support for a role of asymmetric sympathetic outflow in regulating glucose homeostasis. While some uncertainty remains regarding the contribution of sensory innervation and the extent to which these findings generalize beyond mice, the work provides an invaluable advance in understanding neural regulation of liver metabolism.

Reviewed by eLife

Visuomotor mismatch EEG responses over occipital cortex of freely moving human subjects

1. Magdalena Solyga
2. Marek Zelechowski
3. Georg B Keller

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study demonstrates that self-motion strongly affects neural responses to visual stimuli, comparing humans moving through a virtual environment to passive viewing. The evidence for visuomotor mismatch responses is solid, although the interpretation in terms of prediction remains somewhat preliminary. This study bridges human and rodent studies on the role of prediction in sensory processing, and is therefore expected to be of interest to a large community of neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife