Neuroscience

Descending locus coeruleus noradrenergic signaling to spinal astrocyte subset is required for stress-induced pain facilitation

1. Riku Kawanabe-Kobayashi
2. Sawako Uchiyama
3. Kohei Yoshihara
4. Daiki Kojima
5. Thomas McHugh
6. Izuho Hatada
7. Ko Matsui
8. Kenji F Tanaka
9. Makoto Tsuda

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study identifies a novel role for Hes5+ astrocytes in modulating the activity of descending pain-inhibitory noradrenergic neurons from the locus coeruleus during stress-induced pain facilitation. The role of glia in modulating neurological circuits including pain is poorly understood, and in that light, the role of Hes5+ astrocytes in this circuit is a key finding with broader potential impacts. This work is supported by convincing evidence, albeit somewhat limited by the indirect nature of the evidence linking adenosine to nearby neuronal modulation, and possible questions on the population specificity of the transgenic approach.

Reviewed by eLife

Intravital calcium imaging of meningeal macrophages reveals niche-specific dynamics and aberrant responses to brain hyperexcitability

1. Simone Carneiro-Nascimento
2. Chao Wei
3. Anna Gutterman
4. Dan Levy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study presents a technically sophisticated intravital two-photon calcium imaging approach to characterize Ca²⁺ dynamics in distinct populations of meningeal macrophages in awake, freely behaving mice. These data are solid and suggest that meningeal macrophage calcium activity is tightly linked to anatomical sub-compartments, with potential implications for migraine and neuroinflammatory processes. Despite these strengths and broad relevance to neuroimmunology, several technical and interpretational issues limit the study, which could be addressed to strengthen this manuscript.

Reviewed by eLife

Patient-Specific Midbrain Organoids with CRISPR Correction Reveal Disease Mechanisms and Enable Therapeutic Evaluation in Neuronopathic Gaucher Disease

1. Yi Lin
2. Benjamin Liou
3. Venette Fannin
4. Stuart Adler
5. Christopher N Mayhew
6. Jason E Hammonds
7. Yueh-Chiang Hu
8. Jason Tchieu
9. Wujuan Zhang
10. Xueheng Zhao
11. Rebecca L Beres
12. Kenneth DR Setchell
13. Ahmet Kaynak
14. Xiaoyang Qi
15. Ricardo A Feldman
16. Ying Sun

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The manuscript presents important findings with theoretical or practical implications beyond a single subfield. The work is overall solid, and the methods, data, and analyses broadly support the claims. Although the novelty of this study and the work put into it are appreciated, there are also clearly some weaknesses that should be addressed.

Reviewed by eLife

Mixture discrimination training induces durable and generalizable olfactory learning independent of odorant structure and concentration

1. Xiaoyue Chang
2. Huibang Tan
3. Jiehui Niu
4. Kaiqi Yuan
5. Rui Chen
6. Wen Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This potentially important study explores the specificity of olfactory perceptual learning. In keeping with previous work, the authors found that learning to discriminate between two enantiomers does not generalize across the nostrils or to unrelated enantiomers, whereas learning to discriminate odor mixtures does generalize across the nostrils and to other odor mixtures, with this learning effect persisting over at least two weeks. While the evidence presented to support these findings is convincing, it remains unclear why the results differ for enantiomers and why training on odor mixtures generalizes to other odor mixtures.

Reviewed by eLife

Neural Representation of Time across Complementary Reference Frames

1. Yangwen Xu
2. Nicola Sartorato
3. Léo Dutriaux
4. Roberto Bottini

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding on the neural representation of time from two distinct egocentric and allocentric reference frames. The evidence is solid and largely supports the hypothesis, with one caveat that the task differences could impact the observed effects. The work will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists working on the perception and memory of time.

Reviewed by eLife

The distinct role of human PIT in attention control

1. Siyuan Huang
2. Lan Wang
3. Sheng He

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study reports that the human posterior inferotemporal cortex (hPIT) functions as an attentional priority map, integrating both top-down and bottom-up attentional signals rather than serving solely as an object-processing region. The experiments and analyses are well conducted and provide compelling evidence that hPIT bridges dorsal and ventral attention networks and is robustly modulated by attention across diverse visual tasks. The study will be relevant for researchers investigating visual attention, high-level visual cortex, and the neural mechanisms that integrate endogenous and exogenous attentional control.

Reviewed by eLife

Four new Duchenne muscular dystrophy mouse models with clinically relevant exon deletions in the human DMD gene

1. Maaike van Putten
2. Margot Linssen
3. Christa Tanganyika-de Winter
4. Conny M. Brouwers
5. Jill W.C. Claassens
6. Nisha Verwey
7. Max Walsh
8. Tiberiu Loredan Stan
9. Annemieke Aartsma-Rus
10. Peter Hohenstein

Reviewed by Review Commons

Sexual dimorphism in sensorimotor transformation of optic flow

1. Sarah Nicholas
2. Katja Sporar Klinge
3. Luke Turnbull
4. Annabel Moran
5. Aika Young
6. Yuri Ogawa
7. Karin Nordström

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Hoverflies are known for their sexually dimorphic visual systems and exquisite flight behaviors. This valuable study reports how two types of visual descending neurons differ between males and females in their motion- and speed-dependent responses, yet surprisingly, the behavior they control lacks any sexual dimorphism. The results convincingly support these findings, which will be of interest for studies of visuomotor transformations and network-level brain organization.

Reviewed by eLife

Divergent spatial codes in retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus support multi-scale representation of complex environments

1. Célia Laurent
2. Nada El Mahmoudi
3. David M Smith
4. Francesca Sargolini
5. Pierre-Yves Jacob

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study reports results showing how different neurons in the dysgranular retrosplenial cortex code spatial orientation. Specifically, the paper reports that some neurons maintain tuning for a single head direction across multi-compartmental environments, while other neurons are tuned to different head directions that reflect the geometry within each compartment. The study was viewed as likely to expand the field's understanding of directional tuning of neurons, but incomplete evidence was provided to support the conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

RHODOPSIN 7: An ancient non-retinal photoreceptor for contrast vision, darkness detection, and circadian regulation

1. Valentina Kirsch
2. Nils Reinhard
3. Heiko Hartlieb
4. Annika Mohr
5. Dirk Rieger
6. Peter Soba
7. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster
8. Pingkalai R Senthilan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study investigates, from multiple angles, the still-debated function of insect rhodopsin-7 (Rh7). The authors present compelling results for its ancient phylogenetic origin across pan-arthropods, a non-visual role based on expression analyses in the fly brain, an unusual G-protein signalling pathway, and - using behavioural genetics - that Rh7 affects how Drosophila melanogaster interprets and responds to light-dark transitions. Through this, the work provides fundamental new insights into the evolution and function of non-visual opsins.

Reviewed by eLife