Neuroscience

Causal role of the angular gyrus in insight-driven memory reconfiguration

1. Anna-Maria Grob
2. Hendrik Heinbockel
3. Branka Milivojevic
4. Christian F Doeller
5. Lars Schwabe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important paper provides solid evidence that the angular gyrus plays a role in insight-based memory updating. The study is well conducted, timely, and presents clear-cut behavioral results. While the study provides robust evidence that transcranial magnetic stimulation to the angular gyrus impacts memory, evidence for the strong claim of a causal contribution of the angular gyrus in particular – apart from other connected regions, including the hippocampus – is not conclusive.

Reviewed by eLife

Auditory confounds can drive online effects of transcranial ultrasonic stimulation in humans

1. Benjamin R Kop
2. Yazan Shamli Oghli
3. Talyta C Grippe
4. Tulika Nandi
5. Judith Lefkes
6. Sjoerd W Meijer
7. Soha Farboud
8. Marwan Engels
9. Michelle Hamani
10. Melissa Null
11. Angela Radetz
12. Umair Hassan
13. Ghazaleh Darmani
14. Andrey Chetverikov
15. Hanneke EM den Ouden
16. Til Ole Bergmann
17. Robert Chen
18. Lennart Verhagen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important multicenter study provides convincing evidence that the auditory noise emitted during online transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) protocols can pose a considerable confound and is able to explain corticospinal excitability changes as measured with Motor Evoked Potentials (MEP). The findings lay the ground for future studies optimising protocols and control conditions to leverage TUS as a meaningful experimental and clinical tool. A clear strength of the study is the multitude of control conditions (i.e., control sites, acoustic masking, acoustic stimulation). These findings will be of interest to neuroscience researchers using brain stimulation approaches.

Reviewed by eLife

Memory-specific encoding activities of the ventral tegmental area dopamine and GABA neurons

1. Vasileios Glykos
2. Shigeyoshi Fujisawa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study characterized the activity of optogenetically identified dopaminergic and GABAergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area in mice performing a memory-guided T-maze task, and shows that subpopulations of dopaminergic and GABAergic neurons exhibited choice-related activity during the delay period, consistent with some previous studies (e.g. Morris et al., 2006, Parker et al., 2016). The authors demonstrate that these delay-period activities were enhanced when the task requires short-term memory. The results are convincing and this study provides important results regarding the nature of delay-period activity in the task.

Reviewed by eLife

SAFB regulates hippocampal stem cell fate by targeting Drosha to destabilize Nfib mRNA

1. Pascal Forcella
2. Niklas Ifflander
3. Chiara Rolando
4. Elli-Anna Balta
5. Aikaterini Lampada
6. Claudio Giachino
7. Tanzila Mukhtar
8. Thomas Bock
9. Verdon Taylor

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript addresses a non-canonical function of the Class 2 ribonuclease III Drosha in the regulation of adult neural stem cell fate, important for understanding how these cells generate neurons or oligodendrocytic cells.
  Overall, this manuscript has many strengths. The authors identify 165 proteins, several of them enriched in neural stem cells, and potentially specific for miRNA dependent or independent Drosha macromolecular complexes.
  While the authors provide systematic and convincing evidence on the biochemical interactions among the key players in this cascade, the significance of these interactions for neural stem cell fate determination in vivo remains unclear, as the in vitro cellular systems used to document most of the data reported in the paper may not (fully) represent resident neural stem cells in the adult hippocampus. The in vivo function mediated by Drosha/ Safb1 needs to be substantiated by more evidence and/or complementary approaches.

Reviewed by eLife

Maturation of cortical input to dorsal raphe nucleus increases behavioral persistence in mice

1. Nicolas Gutierrez-Castellanos
2. Dario Sarra
3. Beatriz S Godinho
4. Zachary F Mainen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this important study, the authors explore the importance of developmental changes in cortico-DRN innervation in the balance of behavioral control in a foraging task. The authors report somewhat convincing evidence that while juvenile mice and adult mice both perform the task, juveniles exhibit more impulsive behavior due to reduced efficacy of cortico-DRN projections. The authors conclude that the development of cortico-DRN (esp mPFC) projections allows 5HT input to promote perseveration (or exploitation) in the balance of behavioral control. However, reviewers raised issues regarding the strength of the evidence without further experiments.

Reviewed by eLife

Parallel processing of quickly and slowly mobilized reserve vesicles in hippocampal synapses

1. Juan Jose Rodriguez Gotor
2. Kashif Mahfooz
3. Isabel Perez-Otano
4. John F Wesseling

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study addresses the long-standing question as to how different functional pools of synaptic vesicles are organized in presynaptic terminals to mediate different modes of neurotransmitter release. Based on imaging of active synapses with recycling synaptic vesicles labeled by FM-styryl dyes, the authors provide data that are compatible with the hypothesis that two separate reserve pools of vesicles – slowly vs. rapidly mobilizing – feed two distinct releasable pools – reluctantly vs. rapidly releasing. Overall, this study represents a valuable contribution to the field of synapse biology, specifically to presynaptic dynamics and plasticity. The authors' methodological approach of using bulk FM-styryl dye destaining as a readout of precise vesicle arrangements and pools in a population of functionally very diverse synapses has limitations. Consequently, the evidence that directly supports the authors' two-pool-interpretation of their data is incomplete, and alternative interpretations of the data remain possible.

Reviewed by eLife

Iron-sulfur cluster loss in mitochondrial CISD1 mediates PINK1 loss-of-function phenotypes

1. Sara Bitar
2. Timo Baumann
3. Christopher Weber
4. Majd Abusaada
5. Liliana Rojas-Charry
6. Patrick Ziegler
7. Thomas Schettgen
8. Isabella Eva Randerath
9. Vivek Venkataramani
10. Bernhard Michalke
11. Eva-Maria Hanschmann
12. Giuseppe Arena
13. Rejko Krueger
14. Li Zhang
15. Axel Methner

Reviewed by Review Commons

TRESK background potassium channel in MrgprA3 ⁺ pruriceptors regulates acute and chronic itch

1. Júlia Llimós-Aubach
2. Alba Andres-Bilbe
3. Anna Pujol-Coma
4. Irene Pallás
5. Josep Maria de Anta
6. Concepció Soler
7. Núria Comes
8. Gerard Callejo
9. Xavier Gasull

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

A thin-film optogenetic visual prosthesis

1. Eric B Knudsen
2. Kara Zappitelli
3. Jennifer Brown
4. Jonathan Reeder
5. Kevin Sean Smith
6. Marat Rostov
7. Jaebin Choi
8. Amy Rochford
9. Nate Slager
10. Satoru K Miura
11. Kyle Rodgers
12. Ansel Reed
13. Yonatan R Lewis Israeli
14. Seton Shiraga
15. Kyung Jin Seo
16. Corey Wolin
17. Paul Dawson
18. Mohamed Eltaeb
19. Arvind Dasgupta
20. Max Rothman
21. Eugene Yoon
22. Paul Chong
23. Seleipiri Charles
24. Jay M. Stewart
25. Ruwan A Silva
26. Tyson Kim
27. Yifan Kong
28. Alan R Mardinly
29. Max Hodak

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

A new look at the architecture and dynamics of the Hydra nerve net

1. Athina Keramidioti
2. Sandra Schneid
3. Christina Busse
4. Christoph Cramer von Laue
5. Bianca Bertulat
6. Willi Salvenmoser
7. Martin Hess
8. Olga Alexandrova
9. Kristine M Glauber
10. Robert E Steele
11. Bert Hobmayer
12. Thomas W Holstein
13. Charles N David

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work presents important findings on the cellular and ultrastructural organization of the nervous system in the freshwater polyp Hydra. The authors present outstanding imaging data with convincing evidence to support their claims. The manuscript provides a starting point for further functional in vivo studies. The work will be of interest to developmental biologists and neurobiologists.

Reviewed by eLife