Neuroscience

Neurotrophin-3 produced by motor neurons non-cell autonomously regulate the development of pre-motor interneurons in the developing spinal cord

1. Andrea Angla-Navarro
2. Ana Dominguez Bajo
3. Mathilde Toch
4. Cédric Francius
5. Maria Hidalgo-Figueroa
6. Jingwen Zhang
7. Olivier Schakman
8. Manon Martin
9. Xiuqian Mu
10. René Rezsohazy
11. Françoise Gofflot
12. Frédéric Clotman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is a useful study that seeks to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying spinal motor circuit assembly. The authors demonstrate that loss of Onecut transcription factors in spinal motor neurons affects the size and spatial distribution of pre-motor interneurons. However, the study in its current form is incomplete: the data and analyses do not fully support the main conclusion that Onecut acts through Neurotrophin-3 to regulate interneuron development in a non-cell autonomous manner. The work will be of broad interest to cell and developmental biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Morphine regulates astrocyte transcriptional dynamics in the ventral tegmental area by stimulation of glucocorticoid signaling

1. Jennifer J. Tuscher
2. Angela Cleere
3. Robert A. Phillips
4. Catherine E. Newman
5. Guy Twa
6. Nathaniel J. Robinson
7. Lara Ianov
8. Robert E. Sorge
9. Jeremy J. Day

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study examines how chronic pain and opioid exposure interact at the cellular and molecular levels in a reward-related brain region. Using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, the authors map transcriptional changes in the rat ventral tegmental area following chronic inflammatory pain and acute morphine exposure. Notably, their convincing data support that acute morphine, not chronic pain, elicits a stress-related transcriptional response primarily in glial cells rather than neurons, challenging prevailing views of opioid action and supporting growing evidence for glucocorticoid signaling in glial responses. A limitation is the use of a single opioid dose and time point, and further discussion of these constraints would help clarify the broader implications of the findings.

Reviewed by eLife

Adult-neurogenesis allows for representational stability and flexibility in early olfactory system

1. Zhen Chen
2. Krishnan Padmanabhan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper presents an important theory and analysis of the role of neurogenesis and inhibitory plasticity in the drift of neural representations in the olfactory system. For one of the findings, regarding the impact of neurogenesis on the drift, the evidence remains incomplete. The reason lies in the differences in variability/drift of the mitral/tufted cell responses observed in the model compared to experimental observations, where these responses remain stable over extended time scales.

Reviewed by eLife

Serial Dependence Predicts Generalization in Perceptual Learning

1. Noga Pinchuk-Yacobi
2. Dov Sagi
3. Yoram S Bonneh

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study describes long-range serial dependence of performance on a visual texture discrimination training task that manipulated conditions to induce differing degrees of location transfer of learning. The authors re-analyzed previously-published, behavioral data, generating compelling evidence from converging approaches that the serial dependence effects persist over multiple days of training, and may share a common causal mechanism with training-induced location transfer. By informing our understanding of the importance of temporal integration to long-term perceptual learning and its propensity towards specificity or generalizability, these results should interest neuroscientists who seek to uncover underlying neural mechanisms for these processes.

Reviewed by eLife

Programmed Cell Death Modifies Neural Circuits and Tunes Intrinsic Behavior

1. Alison Kochersberger
2. Dongyeop Lee
3. Mohammad Mahdi Torkashvand
4. Sandeep Kumar
5. Saba Baskoylu
6. Titas Sengupta
7. Noelle Koonce
8. Chloe E. Emerson
9. Nandan V. Patel
10. Daniel Colón-Ramos
11. Steven Flavell
12. Andrew M. Leifer
13. Vivek Venkatachalam
14. H. Robert Horvitz
15. Marc Hammarlund

Reviewed by Review Commons

Patient-Specific Midbrain Organoids with CRISPR Correction Recapitulate Neuronopathic Gaucher Disease Phenotypes and Enable Evaluation of Novel Therapies

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

  This study provides potentially important insights by establishing a human disease model and exploring therapeutic approaches. The evidence is generally convincing for descriptive and comparative findings. The authors present solid data, but evidence for proposed biological mechanisms and functional outcomes remains limited.

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 important study offers insights into the anatomical and physiological features of cold-selective lamina I spinal projection neurons. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is convincing, although including a larger sample size and more quantification would have strengthened the study, and the claims of monosynaptic connectivity would benefit from further experimental evidence. 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

The Locomoting State Selectively Amplifies Activity of Sensitizing Neurons in Primary Visual Cortex

1. Antonio J Hinojosa
2. Yehor Kosiachkin
3. Sina E Dominiak
4. Benjamin D Evans
5. Leon Lagnado

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents a valuable analysis of how locomotion modulates the activity of different subtypes of cortical neurons in the mouse primary visual cortex, showing that locomotion more strongly increases responses in sensitizing than in depressing excitatory cells. This data is then used to constrain a model of the responses. While the data are very interesting, the analyses remain incomplete, in particular due to concerns surrounding the modelling.

Reviewed by eLife

Consciously detecting and recognizing a past visual word after its sensory trace is gone

1. Daphné Rimsky Robert
2. Matteo Lisi
3. Kevin Nguy
4. Roxane Jannin
5. Thomas Hardy
6. Nathan Beraud
7. Claire Sergent

Reviewed by preLights

Trial-by-trial inter-areal interactions in visual cortex in the presence or absence of visual stimulation

1. Dianna Hidalgo
2. Giorgia Dellaferrera
3. Giordano Ramos-Traslosheros
4. Will Xiao
5. Carlos R Ponce
6. Maria Papadopouli
7. Stelios Smirnakis
8. Gabriel Kreiman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study investigates trial-by-trial intra- and inter-cortical interactions in the visual cortex of the mouse and the monkey. The authors find that activity in one layer (in mice) or one area (in monkeys) can partially predict neural activity in another layer or area on the single-trial level in different experimental contexts. This valuable finding expands previously known contributions of stimulus-independent downstream activity to neural responses in the visual cortex by demonstrating how these change under varying visual stimuli as well as in the absence of visual stimulation. While the methodology is solid, the juxtaposition of mouse and monkey data from different modalities and at difference scales limits the interpretability of the observations and forces superficial comparisons. More in-depth focus on either data set in isolation may reveal more nuanced understanding of cortical interactions rather than trying to draw parallels between very different datasets.

Reviewed by eLife