Neuroscience

Cell type transcriptomics reveal shared genetic mechanisms in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease

1. Anwesha Bhattacharya
2. Edward A. Fon
3. Alain Dagher
4. Yasser Iturria-Medina
5. Jo Anne Stratton
6. Chloe Savignac
7. Jack Stanley
8. Liam Hodgson
9. Badr Ait Hammou
10. David A Bennett
11. Danilo Bzdok

Reviewed by GigaScience

Spine nanostructure profiling of cultured neurons from mouse models reveals a schizophrenia-linked role for Ecrg4

1. Yutaro Kashiwagi
2. Qingrui Liu
3. Yasuhiro Go
4. Ryo Saito
5. Atsu Aiba
6. Takanobu Nakazawa
7. Shigeo Okabe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  By investigating spine nanostructure and dynamics across multiple genetic mouse models for neurodevelopmental disorders, this important study has the potential to uncover convergent or divergent synaptic phenotypes that may be specifically associated with autism versus schizophrenia risk. The imaging and overall breadth of the methods are convincing. The purely in vitro nature of the study slightly limits the generalisability of the findings, though these limitations are acknowledged and discussed in the manuscript.

Reviewed by eLife

Astrocytic Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay regulates calcium signaling to support synapse function and influence anxiety-like behavior

1. Pablo J. Lituma
2. Aykut Deveci
3. Estibaliz Barrio-Alonso
4. Kun Tan
5. Miles F. Wilkinson
6. Pablo E. Castillo
7. Dilek Colak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study provides the first in vivo evidence that nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in mature astrocytes regulates astrocyte function, synaptic plasticity, and anxiety-related behavior. Using a broad range of approaches, the authors show that conditional deletion of Upf2 alters astrocyte morphology and calcium signaling while impairing synaptic transmission and plasticity, providing solid support for the central conclusion that astrocytic NMD influences neural circuit function. Some key mechanistic claims remain incompletely supported, including whether phenotypes reflect astrocyte remodeling versus loss, the interpretation of synaptic engulfment data, the link between NMD targets and calcium signaling, and the extent to which calcium dysregulation explains the observed synaptic and behavioral effects.

Reviewed by eLife

Stable excitatory-inhibitory synapse balance despite dynamic turnover

1. Krassimira A Garbett
2. James P Allen
3. Jaybree M Lopez
4. Cassandra M Smith
5. Richard C Sando

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study establishes a robust live-imaging toolkit to characterize excitatory and inhibitory synaptic dynamics during neuronal development, advancing our mechanistic understanding of synaptic homeostasis and neural circuit maturation. The core findings clarify how stable E/I balance is maintained despite persistent synaptic turnover, with broad implications for developmental neurobiology and neurodevelopmental disorders. The methodology and quantitative data are convincing and well validated, and this work represents a significant advance that will be of significant interest to researchers in synaptic biology, cell imaging and neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

Sensitivity of the human temporal voice areas to nonhuman primate vocalizations

1. Leonardo Ceravolo
2. Coralie Debracque
3. Thibaud Gruber
4. Didier Grandjean

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study shows that regions of the human auditory cortex that respond strongly to human voices are also sensitive to vocalizations from closely related primate species. The evidence is convincing and methodologically strong. The work offers significant insight into the evolutionary continuity of voice processing and would be of interest to researchers studying auditory processing and evolutionary neuroscience in general.

Reviewed by eLife

Local inhibitory dynamics underpin temporal integration and functional segregation between barrels and septa in the mouse barrel cortex

1. Ali Özgür Argunşah
2. Tevye Jason Stachniak
3. Jenq-Wei Yang
4. Linbi Cai
5. Alexander van der Bourg
6. Rahel Kastli
7. Theofanis Karayannis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Argunşah et al. investigate the mechanisms underlying the differential response dynamics of barrel vs septa domains in shaping the responses to single vs multiple whiskers. Based on the observation of a higher density of SST+ interneurons in the septa, the authors investigate the hypothesis that Elfn1-dependent short-term plasticity shapes these responses. This important study is, however, supported by incomplete evidence; factors restricting the strength of evidence are the limited spatial resolution of the multi-unit activity, as well as the lack of a mechanistic explanation. This provocative and intellectually stimulating hypothesis provides a contribution to work on how different cell types shape cortical representation.

Reviewed by eLife

Efficient Working Memory Maintenance via High-Dimensional Rotational Dynamics

1. Laura Ritter
2. Angus Chadwick

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study investigates noise-robust and energy-efficient circuit mechanisms for working memory by optimizing connectivity and reports that the resulting networks exhibit rotational dynamics and better match aspects of PFC population recording. However, the supporting evidence remains incomplete, given the restricted linear, task-specific training and analysis, and limited comparisons with other prominent models. The manuscript would be strengthened by extending the analysis to nonlinear dynamics, providing more rigorous comparisons with alternative models, and establishing a stronger link to prior theoretical and experimental work.

Reviewed by eLife

Heritability of movie-evoked brain activity and connectivity

1. David C Gruskin
2. Daniel J Vieira
3. Jessica K Lee
4. Gaurav H Patel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper addresses a valuable research question on the modest heritability of the brain's response to movie watching, and how heritability varies under different parameters such as regional spatial hyperalignment and BOLD frequency bands. The topic of this paper is of interest to fMRI methodological experts, and potentially to a broader cognitive neuroscience audience, and those with an interest in understanding the heritable sources of individual differences in brain function. Although some of the conclusions could be strengthened by future cross validation studies in independent and larger family-based samples, and through complementary twin/family and SNP-based models, taken altogether, the analyses and results provide convincing evidence for the overall conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Early Visual Cortex Supports One-Shot Episodic Memory via Spatially Tuned Reactivation

1. Robert Woodry
2. Jonathan Winawer
3. Serra E Favila

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper reports the findings of a neuroimaging experiment that tested the hypothesis that the cortex, specifically early visual areas, reinstates certain content from past episodic events. This is a useful study that highlights the role of early sensory cortices in supporting rapid, one-shot learning of location information for long-term memory. The strength of the evidence is solid, with the methods, data, and analyses broadly supporting the claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Efficient and reproducible pipelines for spike sorting large-scale electrophysiology data

1. Alessio Paolo Buccino
2. Arjun Sridhar
3. David Feng
4. Karel Svoboda
5. Joshua H Siegle

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a valuable and well-documented computational pipeline for the scalable analysis and spike sorting of large extracellular electrophysiology datasets, with particular relevance for high-density recordings such as Neuropixels. The authors demonstrate the pipeline's utility for benchmarking spike sorter performance and evaluating the effects of data compression, supported by thorough testing, clear figures, and openly available code. The workflow is reproducible, portable, and practical, providing concrete guidance on computational cost and runtime. Overall, the evidence supporting the pipeline's performance and output quality is compelling, and this work will be of broad interest to the systems neuroscience community.

Reviewed by eLife