Neuroscience

Involvement of superior colliculus in complex figure detection of mice

1. J Leonie Cazemier
2. Robin Haak
3. TK Loan Tran
4. Ann TY Hsu
5. Medina Husic
6. Brandon D Peri
7. Lisa Kirchberger
8. Matthew W Self
9. Pieter Roelfsema
10. J Alexander Heimel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors present a valuable work suggesting that the superficial, retinorecipient layers of the mouse superior colliculus (SC) may participate in figure-ground segregation and object recognition. These data are based largely on optogenetic perturbations of SC but the strength of evidence is currently incomplete: although the effects are statistically significant, there are significant technical limitations that are not adequately addressed via controls.

Reviewed by eLife

Brain-imaging evidence for compression of binary sound sequences in human memory

1. Fosca Al Roumi
2. Samuel Planton
3. Liping Wang
4. Stanislas Dehaene

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This article brings to bear a useful, extensive set of behavioral methods and neural data to report that activity in numerous cortical regions robustly covaries with the complexity of tone sequences encoded in memory. In its current state, the findings are solid but deserve further analysis to arrive at more convincing conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Interaction of human keratinocytes and nerve fiber terminals at the neuro-cutaneous unit

1. Christoph Erbacher
2. Sebastian Britz
3. Philine Dinkel
4. Thomas Klein
5. Markus Sauer
6. Christian Stigloher
7. Nurcan Üçeyler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Erbacher et al. have used new techniques to explore the neuro-cutaneous structures of human epidermis, which is a valuable goal given the lack of in-depth studies in human skin. Human skin is less studied than rodent skin because it presents challenges in obtaining samples and finding excellent immunohistological labels. They have employed expansion microscopy and super-resolution array tomography for histological studies and have developed a human keratinocyte and human iPSC-derived sensory neuron co-culture

Reviewed by eLife

Multiple NTS neuron populations cumulatively suppress food intake

1. Weiwei Qiu
2. Chelsea R Hutch
3. Yi Wang
4. Jennifer Wloszek
5. Rachel A Rucker
6. Martin G Myers
7. Darleen Sandoval

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment:

  Interoceptive signals from internal organs activate neurons in the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) to help maintain homeostasis. The authors of this paper use gain-of-function and loss-of-function experiments to examine three distinct NTS neuronal populations, individually and in combination, and find that activating (or inhibiting) combinations of these neurons have more robust effects on food intake and body weight than activating (or inhibiting) them individually. The results of this paper are convincing and solid but do not provide mechanistic insights.

Reviewed by eLife

Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex

1. Olgerta Asko
2. Alejandro Omar Blenkmann
3. Sabine Liliana Leske
4. Maja Dyhre Foldal
5. Anais LLorens
6. Ingrid Funderud
7. Torstein R Meling
8. Robert T Knight
9. Tor Endestad
10. Anne-Kristin Solbakk

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study demonstrates that the orbitofrontal cortex is causally involved in the detection of local auditory prediction errors. The methods and procedures are convincing, although the precise functional meaning of the reported effects remains to be specified. This work is of interest to neuropsychologists and cognitive neuroscientists working on the prefrontal cortex, predictive processing, auditory perception, and electrophysiology.

Reviewed by eLife

Smith–Magenis syndrome protein RAI1 regulates body weight homeostasis through hypothalamic BDNF-producing neurons and neurotrophin downstream signalling

1. Sehrish Javed
2. Ya-Ting Chang
3. Yoobin Cho
4. Yu-Ju Lee
5. Hao-Cheng Chang
6. Minza Haque
7. Yu Cheng Lin
8. Wei-Hsiang Huang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study informs whether diminishing BDNF expression or alterations in the activity of BDNF-containing neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus contributes to metabolic alterations in individuals with reduced RAI1 function, including those afflicted with Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS). The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling in that RAI1 deficits in BDNF-containing neurons partly contribute, with prominent effects on glycemic control and modest effects on feeding and body weight regulation. This study would be of interest to neuroscientists and medical biologists working on metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes, as the findings in this study further links SMS-associated obesity with reduced Bdnf gene expression in the PVH and shed light on the role of the Rai1 gene in the PVH Bdnf neurons and offer a basis for future therapeutic strategies for managing obesity in SMS.

Reviewed by eLife

Shh from mossy cells contributes to preventing NSC pool depletion after seizure-induced neurogenesis and in aging

1. Hirofumi Noguchi
2. Jessica Chelsea Arela
3. Thomas Ngo
4. Laura Cocas
5. Samuel Pleasure

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study uses specific and robust genetic approaches to assess mechanisms of kainic acid-induced neurogenesis. This is a fundamental study that bridges several complementary methods and is a convincing use of existing approaches to explore roles for sonic hedgehog in activity-dependent and aging-associated hippocampal neurogenesis.

Reviewed by eLife

Melanopsin activates divergent phototransduction pathways in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cell subtypes

1. Ely Contreras
2. Jacob D Bhoi
3. Takuma Sonoda
4. Lutz Birnbaumer
5. Tiffany M Schmidt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Retinal ganglion cells which are intrinsically photosensitive play important and emerging physiological roles. The mechanisms of phototransduction are still not well known and there exists a controversy regarding the ion channels responsible for the photocurrent. The authors of this manuscript present data that can contribute to understanding the actual ionic mechanisms in two of these cell types. This manuscript will be of general interest to biologists and neuroscientists and should help resolve a major issue in retinal physiology.

Reviewed by eLife

Study of an FBXO7 patient mutation reveals Fbxo7 and PI31 co-regulate proteasomes and mitochondria

1. Sara Al Rawi
2. Lorna Simpson
3. Neil Q. McDonald
4. Veronika Chernuha
5. Orly Elpeleg
6. Massimo Zeviani
7. Roger A. Barker
8. Ronen Spiegel
9. Heike Laman

Reviewed by Review Commons

Network-level changes in the brain underlie fear memory strength

1. Josue Haubrich
2. Karim Nader

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study provides convincing data in support of the conclusion that weak but not strong fear memories are more easily modified using behavioural and pharmacological approaches potentially as a result of differential connectivity with the amygdala showing greater connectivity through the brain in weak compared to strong memories. The scope of the paper would be strengthened if both sexes were examined and more varied definitions of weak vs. strong memories were used. This paper is of interest to behavioural and neuroscience researchers studying learning, memory, and/or neural networks.

Reviewed by eLife