Neuroscience

Haploinsufficiency of lysosomal enzyme genes in Alzheimer’s disease

1. Bruno A. Benitez
2. Clare E. Wallace
3. Maulikkumar Patel
4. Niko-Petteri Nykanen
5. Carla M. Yuede
6. Samantha L. Eaton
7. Cyril Pottier
8. Arda Cetin
9. Matthew Johnson
10. Mia T. Bevan
11. Woodrow D. Gardiner
12. Hannah M. Edwards
13. Brookelyn M. Doherty
14. Ryan T. Harrigan
15. Dominic Kurian
16. Thomas M. Wishart
17. Colin Smith
18. John R. Cirrito
19. Mark S. Sands

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Neural Representation of Associative Threat Learning in Pulvinar Divisions, Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, and Mediodorsal Thalamus in Humans

1. Muhammad Badarnee
2. Zhenfu Wen
3. B Isabel Moallem
4. Stephen Maren
5. Mohammed R Milad

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study provides valuable insights into the role of thalamic nuclei in associative threat and extinction learning, supported by a large dataset and multipronged analyses. However, aspects of the evidence remain incomplete, particularly regarding the statistical methods, the claims of plasticity, and the network modeling framework. With this addressed, this manuscript will be of interest to those interested in learning and memory, fear, thalamic circuitry, and related mental heath conditions.

Reviewed by eLife

Targeting Lysosomal Dysfunction to Alleviate Plaque Deposition in an Alzheimer Disease Model

1. Leigh Ellen Fremuth
2. Diantha van de Vlekkert
3. Huimin Hu
4. Jason Andrew Weesner
5. Ida Annunziata
6. Alessandra d’Azzo

Reviewed by PREreview

Neural representation of action symbols in primate frontal cortex

1. Lucas Y. Tian
2. Kedar U. Garzón
3. Daniel J. Hanuska
4. Adam G. Rouse
5. Mark A. G. Eldridge
6. Marc H. Schieber
7. Xiao-Jing Wang
8. Joshua B. Tenenbaum
9. Winrich A. Freiwald

Reviewed by PREreview

Asymmetric cortical projections to striatal direct and indirect pathways distinctly control actions

1. Jason R Klug
2. Xunyi Yan
3. Hilary Hoffman
4. Max D Engelhardt
5. Fumitaka Osakada
6. Edward M Callaway
7. Xin Jin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents an important finding that D1- and D2-striatal neurons receive distinct cortical inputs, offering key insights into corticostriatal function. For instance, in the context of striatal-dependent learning, this distinction is highly informative for interpreting synaptic physiology data, particularly when inputs to one neuron subtype may change independently of the other. The strength of the evidence is solid, with anatomical and electrophysiological findings aligning well with results from optogenetic and behavioral studies. The study would be of interest to neuroscientists studying basal ganglia circuits in health and disease.

Reviewed by eLife

AVN: A Deep Learning Approach for the Analysis of Birdsong

1. Therese MI Koch
2. Ethan S Marks
3. Todd F Roberts

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work introduces a new Python package, Avian Vocalization Analysis (AVN) that provides several key analysis pipelines for birdsong research. This tool is likely to prove useful to researchers in neuroscience and beyond, as demonstrated by convincing experiments using a wide range of publicly available birdsong data.

Reviewed by eLife

Multiple event segmentation mechanisms in the human brain

1. Tan T Nguyen
2. Joset A Etzel
3. Matthew A Bezdek
4. Jeffrey M Zacks

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study tests whether prediction error or prediction uncertainty controls how the brain segments continuous experience into events. The paper uses validated models that predict human behavior to analyze multivariate neural pattern changes during naturalistic movie watching. The authors provide solid evidence that there are overlapping but partially distinct brain dynamics for each signal.

Reviewed by eLife

Enterovirus D68 2A protease causes nuclear pore complex dysfunction and motor neuron toxicity

1. Katrina M Zinn
2. Mathew W McLaren
3. Michael T Imai
4. Malavika M Jayaram
5. Jeffrey D Rothstein
6. Matthew J Elrick

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study examines the cleavage of motor neuron nucleoporins by proteases 2A and 3C of enterovirus D68, a pathogen associated with acute flaccid myelitis. The evidence supporting the effects of EV-D68 proteases on nuclear import and export is solid and confirms previous results on the specific targeting of nucleoporins by proteases from other enteroviruses. However, the claim that cleavage of nucleoporins by EV-D68 2A is neurotoxic, though intriguing, is incomplete, as the evidence is largely indirect.

Reviewed by eLife

Newly trained navigation and verbal memory skills in humans elicit changes in task-related networks but not brain structure

1. Li Zheng
2. Zachary Boogaart
3. Andrew McAvan
4. Joshua Garren
5. Stephanie G Doner
6. Bradley J Wilkes
7. Will Groves
8. Ece Yuksel
9. Lucia Cherep
10. Arne Ekstrom
11. Steven M Weisberg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents a useful investigation of functional and structural brain changes following navigation and verbal memory training. The analyses of whole-brain volumetric changes are convincing and support the study's main conclusion regarding the lack of a volumetric whole-brain plasticity effects. Some analyses are compelling in demonstrating the presence of longitudinal behavioural effects, the presence of functional activation changes, and the lack of hippocampal volume changes.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid rebalancing of co-tuned ensemble activity in the auditory cortex

1. HiJee Kang
2. Travis A Babola
3. Patrick O Kanold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study uses all-optical electrophysiology methods to provide a valuable insight into the organization of cortical networks and their ability to balance the activity of groups of neurons with similar functional tuning. The all-optical approach used in this study is impressive and the claim that the effects of optical stimulation correspond to a specific homeostatic mechanism is solid. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists and to developers of optical approaches for interrogating brain function.

Reviewed by eLife