Neuroscience

Episodic long-term memory formation during slow-wave sleep

1. Flavio J Schmidig
2. Simon Ruch
3. Katharina Henke

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript supports the intriguing idea that some aspects of novel learning can occur during sleep and outside of awareness. The authors provide solid evidence that presenting participants with novel words and their translations during sleep, especially during slow oscillation troughs, leads to the ability to categorize the semantic meaning of those words during awake testing 36 hours later. These findings represent a valuable contribution to the literature on unconscious processing and learning during sleep, although the claim that the results reflect episodic memory formation, in particular, deviates from the typical use of this term in the literature.

Reviewed by eLife

Species -shared and -unique gyral peaks on human and macaque brains

1. Songyao Zhang
2. Tuo Zhang
3. Guannan Cao
4. Jingchao Zhou
5. Zhibin He
6. Xiao Li
7. Yudan Ren
8. Tao Liu
9. Xi Jiang
10. Lei Guo
11. Junwei Han
12. Tianming Liu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important paper compares cross-species cortical folding patterns in human and non-human primates, showing that most gyral peaks shared across species are in lower-order cortical regions. The supporting evidence is solid and multi-faceted, encompassing anatomy, connectivity and gene expression. This paper will be of interest to a broad readership within the neuroscience community, especially for those interested in cross-species correspondences in brain organisation.

Reviewed by eLife

Modulation of alpha oscillations by attention is predicted by hemispheric asymmetry of subcortical regions

1. Tara Ghafari
2. Cecilia Mazzetti
3. Kelly Garner
4. Tjerk Gutteling
5. Ole Jensen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study by Ghafari et al. tackles a question relevant for the field of attention as it connects structural differences in subcortical regions with oscillatory modulations during attention allocation. Using a combination of Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in human subjects, the valuable results show that inter-individual differences in the lateralisation of alpha oscillations are explained by asymmetry of subcortical brain regions. The strength of evidence is deemed convincing in line with current state-of-the-art.

Reviewed by eLife

Lesions in a songbird vocal circuit increase variability in song syntax

1. Avani Koparkar
2. Timothy L Warren
3. Jonathan D Charlesworth
4. Sooyoon Shin
5. Michael S Brainard
6. Lena Veit

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Songbirds provide a tractable model system to study mechanisms of vocal production and sequencing, and past work showed that the lesions to LMAN, the output of a basal ganglia thalamocortical loop, reduced vocal variability, consistent with a role in motor exploration. In this fundamental work, the authors rigorously examined how lesions to an understudied neighboring region, MMAN, part of a parallel basal ganglia loop, affect singing in Bengalese finches, whose songs exhibit complex sequential transitions. The authors provide compelling evidence that MMAN lesions resulted in increased sequential variability but do not affect syllable acoustic structure, showing that distinct frontal systems can have distinct functions for producing and sequencing song syllables.

Reviewed by eLife

Somatotopic organization among parallel sensory pathways that promote a grooming sequence in Drosophila

1. Katharina Eichler
2. Stefanie Hampel
3. Adrián Alejandro-García
4. Steven A Calle-Schuler
5. Alexis Santana-Cruz
6. Lucia Kmecova
7. Jonathan M Blagburn
8. Eric D Hoopfer
9. Andrew M Seeds

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable work provides a near-complete description of the mechanosensory bristles on the Drosophila melanogaster head and the anatomy and projection patterns of the bristle mechanosensory neurons that innervate them. The data presented are solid. The study has generated numerous resources for the community that will be of interest to neuroscientists in the field of circuits and behaviour, particularly those interested in mechanosensation and behavioural sequence generation.

Reviewed by eLife

Machine learning of dissection photographs and surface scanning for quantitative 3D neuropathology

1. Harshvardhan Gazula
2. Henry FJ Tregidgo
3. Benjamin Billot
4. Yael Balbastre
5. Jonathan Williams-Ramirez
6. Rogeny Herisse
7. Lucas J Deden-Binder
8. Adria Casamitjana
9. Erica J Melief
10. Caitlin S Latimer
11. Mitchell D Kilgore
12. Mark Montine
13. Eleanor Robinson
14. Emily Blackburn
15. Michael S Marshall
16. Theresa R Connors
17. Derek H Oakley
18. Matthew P Frosch
19. Sean I Young
20. Koen Van Leemput
21. Adrian V Dalca
22. Bruce Fischl
23. Christine L MacDonald
24. C Dirk Keene
25. Bradley T Hyman
26. Juan E Iglesias

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors of this study implemented an important toolset for 3D reconstruction and segmentation of dissection photographs, which could serve as an alternative for cadaveric and ex vivo MRIs. The tools were tested on synthetic and real data with compelling performance. This toolset could further contribute to the study of neuroimaging-neuropathological correlations.

Reviewed by eLife

Context dependent contributions of the direct and indirect pathways in the associative and sensorimotor striatum

1. Nisa Cuevas
2. Argelia Llanos-Moreno
3. Kathia I. Ramírez-Armenta
4. Hector Alatriste-León
5. Josué O. Ramírez Jarquin
6. Fatuel Tecuapetla

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable manuscript shows that the optogenetic stimulation of direct and indirect pathway spiny projection neurons (SPNs) in the dorsomedial versus the dorsolateral striatum has different consequences for locomotor activity, real-time place preference, and action selection, in a contextually mediated manner. The evidence in support of this conclusion is solid but would be further strengthened through deeper analysis of the effect and specificity of optogenetic manipulations on SPN activity. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists, particularly behavioral neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife

A single pair of pharyngeal neurons functions as a commander to reject high salt in Drosophila melanogaster

1. Jiun Sang
2. Subash Dhakal
3. Bhanu Shrestha
4. Dharmendra Kumar Nath
5. Yunjung Kim
6. Anindya Ganguly
7. Craig Montell
8. Youngseok Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of ingestion avoidance of high salt in insects is focused in scope, but the authors present convincing evidence that a specific subset of gustatory receptors in a pair of pharyngeal taste neurons are necessary and sufficient for avoiding ingestion of high salt during feeding. This work will be of interest to Drosophila neuroscientists interested in taste coding and feeding behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct axo-protective and axo-destructive roles for Schwann cells after injury in a novel compartmentalised mouse myelinating coculture system

1. Clara Mutschler
2. Shaline V. Fazal
3. Nathalie Schumacher
4. Andrea Loreto
5. Michael P. Coleman
6. Peter Arthur-Farraj

Reviewed by Review Commons

IMPA1 dependent regulation of plasma membrane phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate turnover and calcium signalling by lithium

1. Sankhanil Saha
2. Harini Krishnan
3. Raghu Padinjat

Reviewed by Review Commons