Neuroscience

The circadian clock is a pacemaker of the axonal regenerative ability

1. Francesco De Virgiliis
2. Franziska Mueller
3. Ilaria Palmisano
4. Jessica S Chadwick
5. Lucía Luengo Gutierrez
6. Angela Giarrizzo
7. Yuyang Yan
8. Matt Christopher Danzi
9. Carmen Picón Muñoz
10. Luming Zhou
11. Guiping Kong
12. Elisabeth Serger
13. Thomas Haynes Hutson
14. ines Maldonado
15. Yayue Song
16. Christoph Scheiermann
17. Marco Brancaccio
18. Simone Di Giovanni

Reviewed by PREreview

Sensory neurons couple arousal and foraging decisions in Caenorhabditis elegans

1. Elias Scheer
2. Cornelia I Bargmann

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important study on how behavioral context affects decision making in the nematode C. elegans. Behavioral analyses at multiple time scales combined with genetic and neuronal manipulations revealed how arousal states affect decision making. The results and interpretations are convincing. This work will be of interest to both neuroscientists and ecologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Single-cell RNAseq analysis of spinal locomotor circuitry in larval zebrafish

1. Jimmy J Kelly
2. Hua Wen
3. Paul Brehm

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In zebrafish, primary motor neurons (PMNs) control escape movements, and a more heterogeneous population of secondary motor neurons (SMNs) regulate the speed of rhythmic swimming. Using single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq), the authors have obtained compelling evidence that PMNs, and two types of interneurons innervating them, express a set of three genes encoding voltage-gated ion channels enabling rapid firing. The PMNs also express high transcript levels of proteins involved in exocytosis, which would be expected to support rapid neurotransmitter release. These results will be important for those working on spinal cord function and zebrafish genomics/transcriptomics.

Reviewed by eLife

Loss of finger control complexity and intrusion of flexor biases are dissociable in finger individuation impairment after stroke

1. Jing Xu
2. Timothy Ma
3. Sapna Kumar
4. Kevin Olds
5. Jeremy Brown
6. Jacob Carducci
7. Alex Forrence
8. John Krakauer

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study presents a new apparatus and experimental paradigm to examine deficits in finger control in stroke patients, with the goal of understanding their potential (biomechanical and neural) underpinnings. The paper presents solid experimental design and quantitative analyses to characterise these deficits and infer their origin, but a few technical aspects related to data analysis and statistics could be improved, and alternative interpretations of the results considered. In addition to the scientific results, this novel methodology can be used as a starting point for further research on hand function impairments in stroke, which is of significance for theoretical studies in neuroscience and applied research in rehabilitation.

Reviewed by eLife

Effort cost of harvest affects decisions and movement vigor of marmosets during foraging

1. Paul Hage
2. In Kyu Jang
3. Vivian Looi
4. Mohammad Amin Fakharian
5. Simon P Orozco
6. Jay S Pi
7. Ehsan Sedaghat-Nejad
8. Reza Shadmehr

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study unravels the interaction between effort cost, pupil-indexed brain state, and movement (saccadic) vigor during foraging decisions in marmoset monkeys. Based on a normative computational model, the authors derive the prediction that anticipated effort should affect both decisions and movement vigor during foraging; and then provide solid behavioural and pupillometric evidence for this prediction in a foraging task. This paper will be of interest to decision and motor neuroscience as well as to all researchers studying animal behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Multisensory gaze stabilization in response to subchronic alteration of vestibular type I hair cells

1. Louise Schenberg
2. Aïda Palou
3. François Simon
4. Tess Bonnard
5. Charles-Elliot Barton
6. Desdemona Fricker
7. Michele Tagliabue
8. Jordi Llorens
9. Mathieu Beraneck

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper provides a fundamental expansion of vestibular compensation into transient and partial dysfunction, as well as insights into the adaptation of visual reflexes in this process. The conclusions are convincingly supported with paired histological and behavioral measurements, which are additionally modeled for further interpretation. This work would be of interest to neuroscientists working in multisensory integration and recovery mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife, preLights

Menopause, Brain Anatomy, Cognition and Alzheimer’s Disease

1. Manuela Costantino
2. Grace Pigeau
3. Olivier Parent
4. Justine Ziolkowski
5. Gabriel A. Devenyi
6. Nicole J. Gervais
7. M. Mallar Chakravarty

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents useful findings from a large sample of participants from the UK Biobank on the relationship between menopause (including status, type, and age of onset), cognition, neuroanatomical measures derived from magnetic resonance imaging, and Alzheimer's disease. The strength of evidence is incomplete, and the study would benefit from clearer methodological descriptions, more careful consideration of potential confounds, and better theoretical integration with prior work in the field. This paper will be of interest to people working in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, endocrinology, and dementia.

Reviewed by eLife

Zona incerta distributes a broad movement signal that modulates behavior

1. Sebastian Hormigo
2. Ji Zhou
3. Dorian Chabbert
4. Sarmad Sajid
5. Natan Busel
6. Manuel Castro-Alamancos

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study uses a range of technical approaches to investigate the responses of zona incerta neurons to movement and sensory stimuli. The majority of neurons exhibited movement related activity but only a small proportion were modulated by whisker deflections. The major conclusion of the study is that the zona incerta distributes a general motor signal. The evidence supporting this claim is solid, although the study would be improved by greater transparency and discussion of experimental methods and histological verification of recording sites, viral spread, and which territories of the zona incerta were investigated. The work will be of interest to behavioral and physiological neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife

A reductionist paradigm for high-throughput behavioural fingerprinting in Drosophila melanogaster

1. Hannah Jones
2. Jenny A Willis
3. Lucy C Firth
4. Carlo NG Giachello
5. Giorgio F Gilestro

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents an important open-source resource for high-throughput behavioral screening. The protocols employ inexpensive, off the shelf hardware, and allow real-time analysis of hundreds of behaving flies. Although these protocols were developed using Drosophila melanogaster, they could easily be applied to other models. The evidence in support of the conclusions is solid and the revisions carried out by the authors go a long way towards providing the user with an integrated system that is also more user-friendly.

Reviewed by eLife