Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This valuable developmental study provides intriguing but incomplete evidence suggesting that, relative to adults, the enhancement of instrumental learning by Pavlovian bias is most pronounced in adolescence, while reward-induced memory enhancements are strongest in childhood. Although the authors tackle a key aspect of learning and motivation with rigorous experimental methods and sophisticated modeling techniques, there are substantial concerns about the absence of relevant analyses, the lack of accord between model-based and exploratory analyses, and the lack of an explanation for how the results cohere with inconsistent findings in the literature.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript investigates inter-hemispheric interactions in the olfactory system of Xenopus tadpoles. Using a combination of electrophysiology, pharmacology, imaging, and uncaging, the transection of the contralateral nerve is shown to lead to larger odor responses in the unmanipulated hemisphere, and implicates dopamine signaling in this process. The study uses a rich and sophisticated array of tools to investigate olfactory coding and uncovers valuable mechanisms of signaling. However, the data is incomplete, with a few of the conclusions not being well-supported by the data; the interpretation should be adjusted with some caveats, or additional experiments should be done to support these conclusions.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a valuable contribution to understanding the functional and molecular organization of the medial nucleus accumbens shell in feeding. Using in vivo imaging, optogenetics, and genetic engineering, the authors present solid evidence for a rostro-caudal gradient in D1-SPN activity that refines earlier pharmacological models. The identification of Stard5 and Peg10 as molecular markers and the creation of a Stard5-Flp line represent meaningful advances for future circuit-specific studies. While stronger integration of molecular and functional results and additional analyses of other Stard5-expressing cell types (e.g., D2-SPNs, interneurons) would enhance completeness, the overall methodological rigor and convergence of findings make this a well-executed and informative study. This will be of interest to those interested in brain circuits, reward, emotion, and feeding behavior.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study of critical period plasticity, focused on temperature manipulations, and how different parts of the Drosophila larval motor circuit adapt or maladapt. The work convincingly demonstrates that components of the motor network respond in distinct ways to the heat shock, and the combination of functional, structural, and electrophysiological approaches makes the study of significant interest. The work points to central interneurons as primary drivers of maladaptive changes, while motoneurons and neuromuscular junctions show compensatory or homeostatic adjustments. The study is methodologically rigorous, contributing significant insights into critical period biology using a tractable invertebrate model.

eLife Assessment

This important work employed a recent, functional muscle network analysis for evaluating rehabilitation outcomes in post-stroke patients. While the research direction is relevant and suggests the need for further investigation, the strength of evidence supporting the claims is incomplete. Muscle interactions can serve as biomarkers, but improvements in function are not directly demonstrated, and the method's robustness is not benchmarked against existing approaches.

eLife Assessment

This study developed a novel continuous dot-motion decision-making task, in which participants can see another player's responses as well as their own, to measure perceptual performance and confidence judgments in a social context. The study is a valuable contribution to social decision-making primarily by introducing a new task and offering convincing evidence on how participants are impacted by others' decisions during continuous perceptual choices. The manuscript delivers clear evidence that participants judgements are driven by metacognitive confidence over simpler primary uncertainty.

eLife Assessment

This paper presents a valuable software package, named "Virtual Brain Inference" (VBI), that enables faster and more efficient inference of parameters in dynamical system models of whole-brain activity, grounded in artificial network networks for Bayesian statistical inference. The authors have provided convincing evidence, across several case studies, for the utility and validity of the methods using simulated data from several commonly used models, but more thorough benchmarking could be used to demonstrate the practical utility of the toolkit. This work will be of interest to computational neuroscientists interested in modelling large-scale brain dynamics.

eLife Assessment

The results by Zhu et al provide valuable insights into the representation of border ownership in area V1. They used neuropixel recording to demonstrate the clustering of border ownership, and compared cross-correlation functions between neurons in different layers to demonstrate that they depend on the type of stimulus. The strength of the evidence is solid but can be improved by performing additional analyses and addressing some concerns (as raised in the previous and current review), and accounting for the differences in classical and non-classical receptive field stimulation conditions.

eLife Assessment

This important work represents an advance in our understanding of resident myeloid cells in the zebrafish brain, particularly as it provides a molecular definition of dendritic cell subtypes associated with their localization. Combined evidence from single cell transcriptomics and histology is compelling. The associated atlas will be used as a resource by the zebrafish community and beyond.

eLife Assessment

This high-N, multi-task study offers a comprehensive examination of rhythmicity in behavioral performance during listening. It presents a valuable set of findings that reveal task- and ear-specific effects, challenging the notion of a universal rhythmicity in auditory perception. The evidence is solid and the work is likely to be of significant interest to behavioral and cognitive scientists focused on perception and neural oscillations.