Neuroscience

Human adherent cortical organoids in a multiwell format

1. Mark van der Kroeg
2. Sakshi Bansal
3. Maurits Unkel
4. Hilde Smeenk
5. Steven A Kushner
6. Femke MS de Vrij

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper describes an important advance in an in vitro neural culture system to generate mature, functional, diverse, and geometrically consistent cultures, in a 384-well format with defined dimensions and the absence of the necrotic core, which persists for up to 300 days. The well-based format and conserved geometry make it a promising tool for arrayed screening studies. Some of the evidence is incomplete and could benefit from a more direct head-to-head comparison with more standard culture methods and standardization of cell seeding density as well as further data on reproducibility in each well and for each cell line.

Reviewed by eLife

Revealing unexpected complex encoding but simple decoding mechanisms in motor cortex via separating behaviorally relevant neural signals

1. Yangang Li
2. Xinyun Zhu
3. Yu Qi
4. Yueming Wang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a useful method for the extraction of behaviour-related activity from neural population recordings based on a specific deep learning architecture, a variational autoencoder. Although the authors performed thorough benchmarking of their method in the context of decoding behavioural variables, the evidence supporting claims about encoding is incomplete as the results may stem, in part, from the properties of the method itself.

Reviewed by eLife

Ca2+ channel and active zone protein abundance intersects with input-specific synapse organization to shape functional synaptic diversity

1. Audrey T Medeiros
2. Scott J Gratz
3. Ambar Delgado
4. Jason T Ritt
5. Kate M O'Connor-Giles

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Calcium channels are key regulators of synaptic strength and plasticity. The authors generate new endogenous tags of the Drosophila channel Cac as well as auxiliary subunits to investigate distinct calcium channel functions at the fly NMJ, Is and Ib. They demonstrate functions for voltage-gated calcium channel subunits in promoting synaptic strength, diversity, and plasticity with a series of convincing analyses. The work is important and has broad implications. In addition, the newly developed tools should be quite beneficial for fly biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

A robust brain network for sustained attention from adolescence to adulthood that predicts later substance use

1. Yihe Weng
2. Johann Kruschwitz
3. Laura M Rueda-Delgado
4. Kathy L Ruddy
5. Rory Boyle
6. Luisa Franzen
7. Emin Serin
8. Tochukwu Nweze
9. Jamie Hanson
10. Alannah Smyth
11. Tom Farnan
12. Tobias Banaschewski
13. Arun LW Bokde
14. Sylvane Desrivières
15. Herta Flor
16. Antoine Grigis
17. Hugh Garavan
18. Penny A Gowland
19. Andreas Heinz
20. Rüdiger Brühl
21. Jean-Luc Martinot
22. Marie-Laure Paillère Martinot
23. Eric Artiges
24. Jane McGrath
25. Frauke Nees
26. Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos
27. Tomas Paus
28. Luise Poustka
29. Nathalie Holz
30. Juliane Fröhner
31. Michael N Smolka
32. Nilakshi Vaidya
33. Gunter Schumann
34. Henrik Walter
35. Robert Whelan
36. IMAGEN Consortium

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents an important finding on the relationship between brain activity related to sustained attention and substance use in adolescence/early adulthood with a large longitudinal dataset. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing. The work will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists, and clinicians working on substance use or addiction.

Reviewed by eLife

Bidirectional dysregulation of synaptic glutamate signaling after transient metabolic failure

1. Stefan Passlick
2. Ghanim Ullah
3. Christian Henneberger

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors show that short bouts of chemical ischemia lead to presynaptic changes in glutamate release and long-term potentiation, whereas longer bouts of chemical ischemia lead to synaptic failure and presumably cell death. This convincing work relies on rigorous electrophysiology/imaging experiments and data analysis. It is important as it provides new mechanistic details on chemical ischemia, which could offer potential insights into ischemic stroke in vivo.

Reviewed by eLife

Effects of early life adversity and adolescent basolateral amygdala activity on corticolimbic connectivity and anxiety behaviors

1. Caitlyn R. Cody
2. Emilce Artur de la Villarmois
3. Anabel Miguelez Fernandez
4. Janelle Lardizabal
5. Chaney McKnight
6. Kuei Tseng
7. Heather C. Brenhouse

Reviewed by preLights

MotorNet, a Python toolbox for controlling differentiable biomechanical effectors with artificial neural networks

1. Olivier Codol
2. Jonathan A Michaels
3. Mehrdad Kashefi
4. J Andrew Pruszynski
5. Paul L Gribble

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work will be of interest to the motor control community as well as neuroAI researchers interested in how bodies constrain neural circuit function. The authors present "MotorNet", a useful software package to train artificial neural networks to control a biomechanical model of an effector. The manuscript provides solid evidence that MotorNet is easy to use and can reproduce past results in the field, both at the neural and behavioural levels. Validation is limited to planar arm-like plants or point-masses, so future work exploring three-dimensional movements and other types of plants would strengthen the impact of the tool.

Reviewed by eLife

Bidirectional fear modulation by discrete anterior insular circuits in male mice

1. Sanggeon Park
2. Yeowool Huh
3. Jeansok J Kim
4. Jeiwon Cho

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work provides a valuable characterization of neural activity in the anterior insular cortex during fear. Using behavior, single unit recording, and optogenetic control of neural activity, the paper provides convincing data on the role of anterior insular circuits in bidirectionally controlling fear. The study is a great starting point on the path to testing hypotheses about bidirectional control of behavior via neural activity in anatomically defined output populations.

Reviewed by eLife

Nonlinear sensitivity to acoustic context is a stable feature of neuronal responses to complex sounds in auditory cortex of awake mice

1. Marios Akritas
2. Alex G Armstrong
3. Jules M Lebert
4. Arne F Meyer
5. Maneesh Sahani
6. Jennifer F Linden

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study provides important findings regarding the stability over time of the response properties of neurons in the auditory cortex, including their nonlinear sensitivity to sound context. The data obtained from chronic recordings combined with nonlinear stimulus-response estimation provide convincing evidence that auditory cortical representations are stable over a period of days to weeks. While this study should be of widespread interest to sensory neuroscientists, the paper would be strengthened by a more thorough assessment and discussion of the effects of context and of the stability of the responses, as well as by the inclusion of more information about the location and types of neurons that were sampled.

Reviewed by eLife

Circulating platelets modulate oligodendrocyte progenitor cell differentiation during remyelination

1. Amber R Philp
2. Carolina R Reyes
3. Josselyne Mansilla
4. Amar Sharma
5. Chao Zhao
6. Carlos Valenzuela-Krugmann
7. Khalil S Rawji
8. Ginez A Gonzalez Martinez
9. Penelope Dimas
10. Bryan Hinrichsen
11. César Ulloa-Leal
12. Amie K Waller
13. Diana M Bessa de Sousa
14. Maite A Castro
15. Ludwig Aigner
16. Pamela Ehrenfeld
17. Maria Elena Silva
18. Ilias Kazanis
19. Cedric Ghevaert
20. Robin JM Franklin
21. Francisco J Rivera

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study aims to understand how the regulation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cell (OPC) remyelination and function contributes to the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The authors provide convincing evidence for the platelets mediating OPC differentiation and remyelination. This work will be of interest to several disciplines.

Reviewed by eLife