Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This valuable work proposes a framework inspired by chemotaxis for understanding how the brain might implement behaviours related to navigating toward a goal. The evidence supporting the conceptual claim is convincing. The manuscript proposes a hypothesis that would be of interest to the broad systems neuroscience community, although it was noted the relationship to existing similar hypotheses could be clarified.

eLife assessment

This important study uses cutting-edge miniature two-photon microscopy to follow the structural dynamics of microglia in the somatosensory cortex of freely-moving mice across the sleep/wake cycle. Solid evidence revealed the brain-state-dependent regulation of microglial activity, highlighting alterations in microglial morphology during REM and NREM sleep phases compared to wakefulness. Furthermore, this study provides evidence for a critical role of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus as a modulator of microglial morphology through the β2-adrenergic receptor (b2AR). Overall, the article is an impressive technical feat to bridge a crucial gap in understanding sleep state-induced dynamics of microglia and its modulation by norepinephrine signaling.

eLife assessment

While decades of research findings have supported the idea that action attenuates predicted touch, recent work has countered this, proposing that action actually enhances predicted touch and the previously observed attenuation is due to tactile contact. This present study resolves these contradictory claims regarding the role of prediction in perception of self-action. This important work provides compelling evidence that self-generated touch is attenuated compared to the same touch externally-generated, and a clear explanation for recent high-profile results that appeared to support the opposite view.

eLife assessment

This paper presents valuable findings from whole-brain modeling of persistent activity states (underlying working memory) in the mouse brain. The most novel finding is that a spatial gradient of the density of inhibitory neurons supports a corresponding spatial gradient of propensity to support persistent activity. However, the evidence for this finding appears to be incomplete.

eLife assessment

The paper introduces a new, important framework for neural modelling that promises to offer efficient simulation and analysis tools for a wide range of biologically-realistic neural networks. The paper's examples provide solid support for the ease of use and flexibility of the framework, but the comparison to existing solutions (in particular in terms of accuracy and performance) is incomplete. With a more careful evaluation of the tool's strengths and limitations, the work would be of interest to a wide range of computational neuroscientists and researchers working on biologically inspired machine learning applications.

eLife assessment

This valuable study presents a tool for hyperaligning functional brain topography between individuals, which is based on fMRI connectivity data gathered when participants watched different movies. The tool is validated through strong correlations between functional topographic maps generated from a participant's own localizer data and those derived from other participants' data based on this hyperalignment, even when the training and target participants were drawn from different datasets. The study will potentially be of interest to researchers working with a wide range of fMRI datasets.

eLife assessment

Multimodal experiences that for example contain both visual and tactile components are encoded as associative memories. This manuscript is a valuable contribution supporting structural and functional brain plasticity following associative training protocols that pair together different types of sensory stimuli. The results provide solid support for this plasticity being a basis for cross-modal associative memories.

eLife assessment

This important proof-of-concept study strongly supports the utility of functional ultrasound imaging for evaluating cerebral hemodynamics in rat models of brain injury. Functional ultrasound affords a distinct coverage/spatial/temporal resolution tradeoff when compared to other modalities for studying brain hemodynamics. The solid data presented indicate high fidelity of the recordings, a particular feat given that the rats were awake. On the other hand, single slice imaging and complexity of registration of subsequent imaging sessions limit the usefulness of the approach, particularly for quantitative imaging, and the small sample size will need to be followed up with and verified by future studies. This work will be of interest to researchers working in functional neuroimaging and more precisely with preclinical models of stroke in rodents.

eLife assessment

This important study shows that pharmacologically enhanced catecholamine levels and increased voluntary spatial attention have overlapping as well as dissociable effects on performance on a visuospatial attention task and corresponding EEG markers. The findings provide solid evidence regarding how neuromodulatory arousal and selective spatial attention jointly shape perceptional decision-making.

eLife assessment

This manuscript provides valuable insights to the underlying mechanism for Spinocerebellar ataxia 6 (SCA6) due to defective endolysosomal trafficking of BDNF and its receptor TrkB. The findings are compelling and significant in understanding the underlying pathology of SCA6. The authors have acknowledged the experimental weaknesses and recognize there may be multiple mechanisms to explain the findings.