Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This important study offers substantial technical advancements for neural circuit tracing in larval zebrafish, a model for systems and developmental neurobiology. The enhanced rabies virus-based retrograde transneuronal tracing improves efficiency and provides a method for combined structural and functional brain mapping. The supporting evidence is solid, and there is strong confidence in the technique's utility for neurobiologists working with zebrafish.

eLife Assessment

The findings are valuable, given that they highlight the flexible and future-oriented nature of working memory. However, the evidence for the claims about context/color generalization, behavioural relevance of context decoding, dimensionality reduction, neural geometry, the XOR representation, and the specific contribution of working memory is incomplete. The work could be reframed in terms of prospective remapping.

eLife Assessment

This study provides novel and convincing evidence that both dopamine D1 and D2 expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens shell are crucial for the expression of cue-guided action selection, a fundamental component of decision-making. The research is systematic and rigorous in using optogenetic inhibition of either D1- or D2-expressing medium spiny neurons in the NAc shell to reveal attenuation of sensory-specific Pavlovian-Instrumental transfer, while largely sparing value-based decision on an instrumental task. Findings in this report build on prior research and resolve some conflicts in the literature regarding decision making.

eLife Assessment

This study provides potentially important findings on the understanding of circannual timing in mammals, for which iodothyronine deiodinases (DIOs) have been suggested to be of critical importance, yet functional genetic evidence has been missing. The authors aim to implicate dio3, the major inactivator of the biologically active thyroid hormone T3, in circannual timing in Djungarian hamsters, using a combination of correlative and gene knock-out experiments. Currently, several questions have been raised concerning either the methodological description and/or the design of the experiments, and so the experimental evidence is considered incomplete.

eLife Assessment

Avoidance of UV and blue light by the nematode C. elegans is mediated by the unusual transmembrane protein LITE-1, a non-canonical photoreceptor. In this valuable work, the authors provide convincing evidence that LITE-1 function is also required for avoidance of very high concentrations of the food-associated cue diacetyl, suggesting that it may also function as a diacetyl chemoreceptor. While the evidence for this idea is incomplete, these intriguing findings suggest an unexpected complexity in the function of this unusual photoreceptor.

eLife Assessment

This study examines how the neuronal cytoskeleton contributes to the formation of the axonal membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) in embryonic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, using STED imaging. Conclusions are supported by convincing methods, data, and analyses. This useful work confirms previous data and improves our understanding of the roles of microtubules and actin dynamics in the chronological recruitment of MPS components.

eLife Assessment

These findings are among some of the first to identify a behavioral and neurobiological substrate that disentangles nonassociative from associative fear responses following stress, providing a fundamental push forward in the field. The evidence supporting this is convincing and uses a variety of conceptual and technological approaches. This investigation will be of interest to neuroscientists and behaviourists broadly, as well as clinicians for its relevance to post-traumatic stress disorder.

eLife Assessment

The authors show that innate defensive behavior in mice is shaped by threat intensity, reward value, and social hierarchy, highlighting how value and social context influence instinctive decisions. The authors provide useful behavioural findings supported by strong data, yet the evidence is incomplete due to ambiguities about methodology and the computational model that remains largely descriptive.

eLife Assessment

This is a methodologically rich manuscript that is important for elucidating the neural mechanisms of expectation in perception. The analyses are convincing in extending analogous findings in attention and working memory. With further clarification, the findings will be of broad interest to vision researchers.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a theoretical framework for building continuous attractor networks that integrate with a wide range of topologies, which are of increasing relevance to neuroscientists. While the work offers solid evidence for most claims, the evidence supporting biological plausibility and key claims - such as the existence of a continuum of stable states and robustness across geometries - is currently incomplete and would benefit from further analysis or discussion. The study will be of interest to computational and systems neuroscientists working on neural dynamics and network models of cognition.