Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This important manuscript uses circuit mapping, chemogenetics, and optogenetics to demonstrate a novel hippocampal lateral septal circuit that regulates social novelty behaviours and shows that downstream of the hippocampal septal circuit, septal projections to the ventral tegmental area are necessary for general novelty discrimination. The strength of the evidence supporting the claims is convincing but would be strengthened by the inclusion of additional functional assays. The work will be of interest to systems and behavioural neuroscientists who are interested in the brain mechanisms of social behaviours.

eLife Assessment

This paper presents valuable findings on the processing of sound mixtures in the auditory cortex of ferrets, a species widely used for studies of auditory processing. Using the convenient and relatively high-resolution method of functional ultrasound imaging, the authors provide solid evidence that background noise invariance emerges across the auditory cortical processing hierarchy. However, differences between this and other methods limit the comparisons that can be made across different species, and additional controls are needed to fully substantiate the paper's claims. This work will nonetheless be of interest to researchers studying the auditory cortex and the neural mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis and hearing in noise.

eLife Assessment

This important study aims to understand the role of endothelial cell differentiation into pericytes in the restoration of blood-brain barrier function after ischemic stroke. Identification of pericytes derived from endothelial cells and the involvement of myeloid cell-derived TGFβ1 signaling are compelling new findings, but future studies will be needed to validate the origin and nature of these pericytes. The work will be of interest to blood-brain barrier and basic and translational stroke researchers.

eLife Assessment

This paper provides a useful systematic quantification of the relationship between electrophysiological response properties of single neurons with their position in the brain. The quality of the classification setup is high and the methodology is solid.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study proposes a network implementation of the "re-aiming" learning strategy, which has been hypothesized to underlie brain-computer interface learning. Combining theoretical arguments, numerical simulations, and analysis of experimental data, the authors provide convincing evidence for their hypothesis. This paper will likely be of broad interest to the systems neuroscience community.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study explores a novel cellular mechanism underlying the degeneration of locus coeruleus neurons during chronic restraint stress. The evidence supporting the overexpression of LC neurons after chronic stress is compelling. However, to fully support the broad implications for LC degeneration and Alzheimer's disease, the study would benefit from stronger causal integration and validation in age-relevant models.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important insights as to how interacting brain areas produce movement during the execution of a skilled multi-directional reaching task. Using a combination of single neuron and neural population analysis, optogenetic stimulation, and computational models, the authors provide convincing evidence of an asymmetrical influence between mouse premotor and motor cortex during the execution of a well-practiced behaviour. This asymmetry can only be captured by some but not all population analysis methods, which is a key lesson to the field in and of itself. Analyzing how activity that is shared and private to these areas relates to different aspects of movements, and why different methods provide different outcomes regarding the nature of inter-area interactions would further strengthen this work.

eLife Assessment

Oor and colleagues report the potentially independent effects of the spatial and feature-based selection history on visuomotor choices. They outline compelling evidence, tracking the dynamic history effects based on their extremely clever experimental design (urgent version of the search task). Their finding is of fundamental significance, broadening the framework to identify variables contributing to choice behavior and their neural correlates in future studies.

eLife Assessment

The manuscript by Hawes et al. provides important findings on how striatal projection neurons regulate spontaneous locomotion speed in the context of implicit motivation and distinct contextual valence. Overall, the evidence for the findings is solid, although evidence for the claim that striatonigral projections from the matrix and patches have functionally opposing roles is incomplete. This work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists in the basal ganglia, movement control, and cognition fields.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript provides fundamental new insight into the mechanisms linking photoperiod, reproduction function, and feeding activity, using medaka, a genetic model that itself exhibits photoperiodic responses. As well as identifying key neuropeptide genes that are regulated by photoperiod and involved in regulating feeding activity, the authors establish a knockout line for agrp1 using CRISPR Cas9 - based approach, profiting from the extensive use and development on this methodology in medaka. The combination of the RNAseq and quantitative in situ hybridization analysis with the knockout results as well as the study of ovariectomized fish provides compelling evidence implicating agrp1 in feeding regulation in response to photoperiod and reproductive status.