Neuroscience

Cortical astrocyte activation triggers meningeal nociception and migraine-like pain

1. Dara Bree
2. Jun Zhao
3. Jennifer Stratton
4. Dan Levy

Reviewed by preLights

Progressive neural engagement within the IFG-pMTG circuit as gesture and speech entropy and MI advances

1. Wanying Zhao
2. Zhouyi Li
3. Xiang Li
4. Yi Du

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study uses brain stimulation and electroencephalography to study speech-gesture integration. It investigates the role of frontotemporal regions in integrating linguistic and extra-linguistic information during communication, focusing on the inferior frontal gyrus and posterior middle temporal gyrus. Reliance on activation patterns of tightly-coupled brain regions over short timescales leads to incomplete support for the study's conclusions due to conceptual and methodological limitations.

Reviewed by eLife

A ventral hippocampal-lateral septum pathway regulates social novelty preference

1. Maha Rashid
2. Sarah Thomas
3. Jennifer Isaac
4. Sonia Corbett Karkare
5. Hannah Klein
6. Malavika Murugan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important manuscript uses circuit mapping, chemogenetics, and optogenetics to demonstrate a novel hippocampal lateral septal circuit that regulates social novelty behaviours and shows that downstream of the hippocampal septal circuit, septal projections to the ventral tegmental area are necessary for general novelty discrimination. The strength of the evidence supporting the claims is convincing but would be strengthened by the inclusion of additional functional assays. The work will be of interest to systems and behavioural neuroscientists who are interested in the brain mechanisms of social behaviours.

Reviewed by eLife

Hierarchical encoding of natural sounds mixtures in ferret auditory cortex

1. Agnès Landemard
2. Célian Bimbard
3. Yves Boubenec

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper presents valuable findings on the processing of sound mixtures in the auditory cortex of ferrets, a species widely used for studies of auditory processing. Using the convenient and relatively high-resolution method of functional ultrasound imaging, the authors provide solid evidence that background noise invariance emerges across the auditory cortical processing hierarchy. However, differences between this and other methods limit the comparisons that can be made across different species, and additional controls are needed to fully substantiate the paper's claims. This work will nonetheless be of interest to researchers studying the auditory cortex and the neural mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis and hearing in noise.

Reviewed by eLife

The myeloid cell-driven transdifferentiation of endothelial cells into pericytes promotes the restoration of BBB function and brain self-repair after stroke

1. Tingbo Li
2. Ling Yang
3. Jiaqi Tu
4. Yufan Hao
5. Zhu Zhu
6. Yingjie Xiong
7. Qingzhu Gao
8. Lili Zhou
9. Guanglei Xie
10. Dongdong Zhang
11. Xuzhao Li
12. Yuxiao Jin
13. Yiyi Zhang
14. Bingrui Zhao
15. Nan Li
16. Xi Wang
17. Jie-Min Jia

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study aims to understand the role of endothelial cell differentiation into pericytes in the restoration of blood-brain barrier function after ischemic stroke. Identification of pericytes derived from endothelial cells and the involvement of myeloid cell-derived TGFβ1 signaling are compelling new findings, but future studies will be needed to validate the origin and nature of these pericytes. The work will be of interest to blood-brain barrier and basic and translational stroke researchers.

Reviewed by eLife

Neurons throughout the brain embed robust signatures of their anatomical location into spike trains

1. Gemechu Bekele Tolossa
2. Aidan M Schneider
3. Eva Dyer
4. Keith B Hengen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper provides a useful systematic quantification of the relationship between electrophysiological response properties of single neurons with their position in the brain. The quality of the classification setup is high and the methodology is solid.

Reviewed by eLife

A theory of brain-computer interface learning via low-dimensional control

1. Jorge A Menéndez
2. Jay A Hennig
3. Matthew D Golub
4. Emily R Oby
5. Patrick T Sadtler
6. Aaron P Batista
7. Steven M Chase
8. Byron M Yu
9. Peter E Latham

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study proposes a network implementation of the "re-aiming" learning strategy, which has been hypothesized to underlie brain-computer interface learning. Combining theoretical arguments, numerical simulations, and analysis of experimental data, the authors provide convincing evidence for their hypothesis. This paper will likely be of broad interest to the systems neuroscience community.

Reviewed by eLife

Chronic stress impairs autoinhibition in neurons of the locus coeruleus to increase asparagine endopeptidase activity

1. Hiroki Toyoda
2. Doyun Kim
3. Byeong Geon Koh
4. Tomomi Sano
5. Takashi Kanematsu
6. Seog Bae Oh
7. Youngnam Kang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study explores a novel cellular mechanism underlying the degeneration of locus coeruleus neurons during chronic restraint stress. The evidence supporting the overexpression of LC neurons after chronic stress is compelling. However, to fully support the broad implications for LC degeneration and Alzheimer's disease, the study would benefit from stronger causal integration and validation in age-relevant models.

Reviewed by eLife

Hierarchy between forelimb premotor and primary motor cortices and its manifestation in their firing patterns

1. Akiko Saiki-Ishikawa
2. Mark Agrios
3. Sajishnu Savya
4. Adam Forrest
5. Hannah Sroussi
6. Sarah Hsu
7. Diya Basrai
8. Feihong Xu
9. Andrew Miri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important insights as to how interacting brain areas produce movement during the execution of a skilled multi-directional reaching task. Using a combination of single neuron and neural population analysis, optogenetic stimulation, and computational models, the authors provide convincing evidence of an asymmetrical influence between mouse premotor and motor cortex during the execution of a well-practiced behaviour. This asymmetry can only be captured by some but not all population analysis methods, which is a key lesson to the field in and of itself. Analyzing how activity that is shared and private to these areas relates to different aspects of movements, and why different methods provide different outcomes regarding the nature of inter-area interactions would further strengthen this work.

Reviewed by eLife

Location- and feature-based selection histories make independent, qualitatively distinct contributions to urgent visuomotor performance

1. Emily E Oor
2. Emilio Salinas
3. Terrence R Stanford

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Oor and colleagues report the potentially independent effects of the spatial and feature-based selection history on visuomotor choices. They outline compelling evidence, tracking the dynamic history effects based on their extremely clever experimental design (urgent version of the search task). Their finding is of fundamental significance, broadening the framework to identify variables contributing to choice behavior and their neural correlates in future studies.

Reviewed by eLife