Neuroscience

Stimulus dependencies—rather than next-word prediction—can explain pre-onset brain encoding in naturalistic listening designs

1. Inés Schönmann
2. Jakub Szewczyk
3. Floris P de Lange
4. Micha Heilbron

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study investigates whether neural prediction of words can be measured through pre-activation of neural network word representations in the brain; convincing evidence is provided that neural network representations of neighboring words are correlated in natural language. This study urges future studies to carefully differentiate between neural activity that predicts the upcoming word and neural activity that encodes the current words, which contain information that can be used to predict the upcoming word. The study is of potential interest to researchers investigating language encoding in the brain or in large language models.

Reviewed by eLife

Circadian photoreceptor CRYPTOCHROME promotes wakefulness under short winter-like days via a GABAergic circuitry

1. Lixia Chen
2. Danya Tian
3. Chang Su
4. Luoying Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Winter months with short days are commonly associated with seasonal depression and hypersomnolence; the mechanisms behind this hypersomnolence however, remain unclear. Chen and colleagues identify a genetic basis for this phenomenon in the fly Drosophila - mutations in the circadian photoreceptor cryptochrome resulted in increased sleep under short photoperiods. These findings are valuable insights into the genetic mechanisms regulating sleep under short days. The data supporting the precise neurobiological basis of these effects however, remains incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Individuality across environmental context in Drosophila melanogaster

1. Thomas F Mathejczyk
2. Cara Knief
3. Muhammad A Haidar
4. Florian Freitag
5. Tydings McClary
6. Mathias F Wernet
7. Gerit A Linneweber

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  There is a growing interest in understanding the individuality of animal behaviours. In this important article, the authors build and use an impressive array of high throughput phenotyping paradigms to examine the 'stability' (consistency) of behavioural characteristics in a range of contexts and over time. The results show that certain behaviours are individualistic and persist robustly across external stimuli while others are less robust to these changing parameters. The data supporting their findings is extensive and convincing. At the same time, the main analyses focus on a selected subset of the many behavioural metrics recorded, so a large fraction of the acquired data remains only lightly explored; by making these additional data available, the authors provide an invaluable resource for future work to apply alternative analytical frameworks and further mine this rich dataset.

Reviewed by eLife

Butyrate rescues chlorpyrifos-induced social deficits through inhibition of class I histone deacetylases

1. Leonardo Diaz
2. Ally Xinyi Kong
3. Ping Zhang
4. Jinhua Chi
5. Khoa Pham
6. Maja Johnson
7. Aiden Eno
8. Isabelle Douglas
9. Yuxuan Mao
10. James W MacDonald
11. Julia Yue Cui
12. Theo Bammler
13. Haiwei Gu
14. Yijie Geng

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable manuscript demonstrates that embryonic exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos (CPF) impairs juvenile zebrafish social behavior and sets out to define the underlying mechanism. The authors provide solid evidence that butyrate and class I histone deacetylases are involved, as their modulation rescues the phenotype. However, claims that CPF acts through the microbiome and nitric oxide signaling remain correlative and incomplete. Additional validation would strengthen the intriguing hypotheses raised by this work.

Reviewed by eLife

Prior cocaine use disrupts identification of hidden states by single units and neural ensembles in orbitofrontal cortex

1. Wenhui Zong
2. Lauren Mueller
3. Zhewei Zhang
4. Jinfeng Zhou
5. Geoffrey Schoenbaum

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental work shows that a history of cocaine self-administration disrupts the orbitofrontal cortex's ability to encode similarities between distinct sensory stimuli that possess identical task information - hidden states. The evidence supporting these conclusions is compelling, with methods and analyses spanning self-administration, a novel 'figure 8' sequential odor task, recordings from 3,881 single units, and sophisticated firing analyses revealing complex orbitofrontal representations of task structure. These results will be of broad interest to psychologists, neuroscientists, and clinicians.

Reviewed by eLife

Chemogenetic Manipulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus-Substantia Nigra Pars Reticulata Pathway Promotes Recovery in HemiParkinsonian Rat Models

1. Nassim Stegamat
2. Rupert Smit
3. Jacquelynn Rajavong
4. Thomas Campion
5. Sraavya Pinjala
6. George Smith

Reviewed by PREreview

Drift in individual behavioral phenotype as a strategy for unpredictable worlds

1. Ryan T Maloney
2. Athena Q Ye
3. Sam-Keny Saint-Pre
4. Tom Alisch
5. David M Zimmerman
6. Nicole C Pittoors
7. Benjamin L de Bivort

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Maloney et al. offer an important contribution to understanding the potential ecological mechanisms behind individual behavioral variation. By providing compelling theoretical and experimental data, the study bridges the gap between individual, apparently stochastic behavior with its evolutionary purpose and consequences. The work further provides a testable and generalizable model framework to explore behavioral drift in other behaviors.

Reviewed by eLife

Anesthesia Lowers Spatial Frequency Preference in the Primary Visual Cortex

1. Jiahao Wu
2. Taisuke Yoneda
3. Kallum Robinson
4. Naotsugu Tsuchiya
5. Yumiko Yoshimura

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper describes useful findings on the effects of isoflurane anesthesia on the visual cortical circuitry of the mouse. It provides solid evidence that the visual spatial frequency sensitivity becomes coarser (lower resolution) during anesthesia, with distinct effects described in excitatory neurons, and parvalbumin (PV) and somatostatin (SOM) positive interneurons. This study should be of interest to neuroscientists studying the mouse visual cortex and the effects of anesthesia on cortical circuitry.

Reviewed by eLife

Formation of task representations and replay in mouse medial prefrontal cortex

1. Hamed Shabani
2. Hannah Muysers
3. Yuk-Hoi Yiu
4. Jonas-Frederic Sauer
5. Marlene Bartos
6. Christian Leibold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study characterizes the evolution of medial prefrontal cortex activity during the learning of an odor-based choice task. The evidence provided is solid, providing quantification of functional classes of cells over the course of learning using the longitudinal calcium recordings in prefrontal cortex, and quantification of prefrontal sequences. However, the experimental design appears to provide limited evidence to support strong conclusions regarding the functional relevance of neural sequences. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating learning and decision-making processes.

Reviewed by eLife

Multiple functions of cerebello-thalamic neurons in learning and offline consolidation of a motor skill in mice

1. Andrés Pablo Varani
2. Caroline Mailhes-Hamon
3. Romain W Sala
4. Marie Sarraudy
5. Sarah Fouda
6. Jimena L Frontera
7. Clément Léna
8. Daniela Popa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Varani et al present important findings regarding the role of distinct cerebellothalamic connections in motor learning and performance. The evidence supporting the main claims is convincing, with multiple replications, validation of their techniques, and appropriate controls. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists interested in central mechanisms of motor learning and control, as well as thalamic physiology.

Reviewed by eLife