Neuroscience

Modified self-amplifying RNA mediates robust and prolonged gene expression in the mammalian brain

1. Jennifer Freire
2. Joshua E. McGee
3. Dana Shaw
4. Yuxin Zhou
5. Yangyang Wang
6. Colin Porter
7. Lauren Dang
8. Erynne San Antonio
9. Ziqing Yu
10. Kexin Li
11. Wilson W. Wong
12. Mark W. Grinstaff
13. Xue Han

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Dorsal hippocampus mediates light–tone associations in male mice

1. Julia S Pinho
2. Carla Ramon-Duaso
3. Irene Manzanares-Sierra
4. Arnau Busquets-Garcia

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Pinho et al use in vivo calcium imaging and chemogenetic approaches to examine the involvement of hippocampal sub-regions across the different stages of a sensory preconditioning task in mice. They find evidence for sensory preconditioning in male mice. They also find that, in these mice, CaMKII-positive neurons in the dorsal hippocampus encode the audio-visual association that forms in stage 1 of the task. The evidence in support of these findings is convincing. The important study will be of interest to researchers in the fields of learning and memory and/or hippocampus function.

Reviewed by eLife

Neural correlates and reinstatement of recent and remote memory in children and young adults

1. Iryna Schommartz
2. Philip F Lembcke
3. Javier Ortiz-Tudela
4. Martin Bauer
5. Angela M Kaindl
6. Claudia Buss
7. Yee Lee Shing

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper provides potentially valuable insight into why memory consolidation may differ between children (5-7 years of age) and adults. The work hints at developmental differences in neural engagement during the retrieval of recent and remote memories. However, there are several major concerns with the analyses not alleviated by included controls, and as such the evidence supporting the authors' main claims remains incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Motor biases reflect a misalignment between visual and proprioceptive reference frames

1. Tianhe Wang
2. Ryan J Morehead
3. Amber Jiang
4. Richard B Ivry
5. Jonathan S Tsay

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study uses an original method to address the longstanding question of why reaching movements are often biased. The combination of a wide range of experimental conditions and computational modeling is a strength. Solid evidence is presented in support of the main claim that most of the biases in 2-D movement planning originate in misalignment between visuo-proprioceptive reference frames.

Reviewed by eLife

The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition

1. Xiaoliang Luo
2. Robert M Mok
3. Bradley C Love

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates that some degree of spatial tuning (e.g., place cells) and ability to decode spatial location emerges in sufficiently complex systems trained to process visual information. This intriguing observation challenges existing approaches and findings used in the study of spatial navigation. However, the strength of evidence regarding the nature and quality of spatial tuning, its compatibility with experimental data, and the overall interpretation of the study remains incomplete. This work will be of interest to the research community of spatial navigation.

Reviewed by eLife

Formation of Task Representations and Replay in Mouse Medial Prefrontal Cortex

1. Hamed Shabani
2. Hannah Muysers
3. Yuk-Hoi Yiu
4. Jonas-Frederic Sauer
5. Marlene Bartos
6. Christian Leibold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study characterizes the evolution of medial prefrontal cortex activity during the learning of an odor-based choice task. The evidence provided is solid, providing quantification of functional classes of cells over the course of learning using the longitudinal calcium recordings in prefrontal cortex, and quantification of prefrontal sequences. However, the experimental design appears to provide limited evidence to support strong conclusions regarding pre-existing representations or the functional relevance of neural sequences. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating learning and decision-making processes.

Reviewed by eLife

Cross-modal interaction of Alpha Activity does not reflect inhibition of early sensory processing: A frequency tagging study using EEG and MEG

1. Marion Brickwedde
2. Rupali Limachya
3. Roksana Markiewicz
4. Emma Sutton
5. Christopher Postzich
6. Kimron Shapiro
7. Ole Jensen
8. Ali Mazaheri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable manuscript provides solid evidence regarding the role of alpha oscillations in sensory gain control. The authors use an attention-cuing task in an initial EEG study followed by a separate MEG replication study to demonstrate that whilst (occipital) alpha oscillations are increased when anticipating an auditory target, so is visual responsiveness as assessed with frequency tagging. The authors propose that their results demonstrate a general vigilance effect on sensory processing and offer a re-interpretation of the inhibitory role of the alpha rhythm.

Reviewed by eLife

Extracting Value Coding Features from Individual Serotonin Neurons

1. Emerson F Harkin
2. Jean-Claude Béïque
3. Richard Naud

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors used a Bayesian modeling framework to fit behavior and serotonin neuron activity to reward history across multiple timescales. A key goal was to distinguish value coding from other influences, particularly thirst, by comparing model fits across neurons. Although the question and approach are valuable, several limitations of the current manuscript mean that support for the conclusions is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Sub-surface deformation of individual fingerprint ridges during tactile interactions

1. Giulia Corniani
2. Zing S Lee
3. Matt J Carré
4. Roger Lewis
5. Benoit P Delhaye
6. Hannes P Saal

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  By leveraging optical coherence tomography this study provides important insight into the deformation of human fingertip ridges when contacting raised features such as edges and contours. The study provides compelling evidence that such features tend to cause deformation and relative movement of what the authors term ridge flanks rather than bending of the ridges themselves.

Reviewed by eLife

Fear conditioning biases olfactory sensory neuron expression across generations

1. Clara W Liff
2. Yasmine R Ayman
3. Eliza CB Jaeger
4. Avery Cardeiro
5. Hudson S Lee
6. Alexis Kim
7. Angélica V Albarracín
8. Dianne-Lee KD Ferguson
9. Bianca J Marlin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides solid evidence that odor fear conditioning biases olfactory sensory neuron receptor choice in mice and that this bias is detectable in the next generation. The authors use rigorous histological and behavioral analyses, including unsupervised behavioral quantification, to support the conclusion that odor-specific sensory representations can be shaped by experience and partially transmitted across generations. While the behavioral effects in offspring are modest and the mechanistic basis of inheritance remains unresolved, the study offers an important and carefully executed contribution to understanding experience-dependent sensory plasticity and its intergenerational consequences.

Reviewed by eLife