Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This fundamental study investigates the transcriptional changes in neurons that underlie loss of learning and memory with age in C. elegans, and how cognition is maintained in insulin/IGF-1-like signaling mutants. The presented evidence is compelling, utilizing a cutting-edge method to isolate neurons from worms for genomics that is clearly conveyed with a rigorous experimental approach. Overall, this study supports that older daf-2 worms maintain cognitive function via mechanisms that are unique from younger wild type worms, which will be of great interest to neuroscientists and researchers studying ageing.

eLife assessment

The authors use point light displays to measure biological motion (BM) perception in children (mean = 9 years) with and without ADHD, and relate it to IQ, social responsiveness scale (SRS) scores and age. They report that children with ADHD were worse at all three BM tasks, but that those tasks loading more heavily on local processing relate to social interaction skills and those loading on global processing relate to age. There are still some elements of the results that need clarification with future work, but nevertheless, the important and solid findings extend our limited knowledge of BM perception in ADHD, as well as biological motion processing mechanisms in general.

eLife assessment

This valuable paper explores the role of translational regulation in the establishment of differential gene expression between neurons and glia in Drosophila. The paper uses Ribo-seq to show extensive variation in the translation efficiency of specific transcripts between neurons and glia. The evidence supporting the model is solid, although only one example (that exhibits very strong differential transcriptional expression between one class of neurons and glia) is studied in detail for translation efficiency.

eLife assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the mechanisms underlying a rare brain disease using an organoid system. In this revised version, there are remaining reviewers' comments that are not yet addressed and as such, while the data presented are solid, the evidence supporting some of the claims is deemed incomplete. The work will be of interest to neuroscientists and clinicians aiming to understand and combat similar neurodegenerative disorders.

eLife assessment

This important work examines the potential utility of socio-emotional and socio-cognitive mental training on hippocampal subfield structure and function, and cortisol levels. The authors provide convincing evidence that CA1-3 volume is sensitive to socio-emotional training, with changes related to function plasticity and cortisol levels. Further, the authors provide evidence of change across all subfields and training modules related to stress.

eLife assessment

This important study advances our understanding of how distinct types of communication signals differentially affect mouse behaviors and amygdala cholinergic/dopaminergic neuromodulation. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is solid. Researchers interested in the complex interaction between prior experience, sex, behavior, hormonal status, and neuromodulation should benefit from this study.

eLife assessment

The authors' dataset and analysis provide a fundamental new understanding of how cerebellar output contributes to various cerebellar-dependent diseases. The observation that different firing statistics at the level of the cerebellar nuclei directly impart disease-specific phenotypes is quite convincing. The classifier used in the manuscript remains a potential weak-point, showing limited efficacy, particularly for identifying mice with tremor. The concern about classifier accuracy is ameliorated by the fact that the classifier parameters are easily interpretable, and allowed the authors to use these parameters to design stimulation experiments.

eLife assessment

This is an important information-theoretic re-analysis of human intracranial recordings during reward and punishment learning. It provides convincing evidence that reward and punishment learning is represented in overlapping regions of the brain while relying on specific inter-regional interactions. This preprint will be interesting to researchers in systems and cognitive neuroscience.

eLife assessment

This manuscript used the sci-Plex system for screening compounds to improve the Ascl1-induced reprogramming from Müller glia to bipolar neurons in vitro, followed by in vivo characterization of two promising compounds in mice. The findings are valuable for future studies to develop cell replacement strategies for treatment of retinal degeneration. The strength of evidence is solid, featuring a scalable drug screening design, albeit with limited mechanistic insights.

eLife assessment

This important work provides insight into the activity and spatial organization of synapses during early postnatal development in the mouse visual cortex, using state-of-the-art tools to show that synapses are distributed in co-active clusters well before eye opening. The evidence supporting the claims is convincing, and this revised version provides additional methodological details about the experimental paradigm and image analysis.. This work is of particular interest to the field of developmental neuroscience and can also be used by computational neuroscientists studying dendritic integration.