Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This study evaluated how naturalistic behaviors are encoded in the striatum by analyzing neural ensembles engaged during grooming behavior. The study shows that neural responses are highly heterogeneous during grooming, but ensembles were detected in which units were more correlated during grooming than during the entire session. This study presents an important contribution to the field by shedding light on how ensembles of neurons encode innate behavior. The results are convincing.

eLife assessment

This important study combines behavioral and imaging experiments to understand how levels of important brain chemicals shape the processing of information in the brain in children and young adults. The sample size and data quality are outstanding and some of the data are quite convincing. However, the calculation and interpretation of the brain chemical concentration measurements as well as the interpretation of the model-based behavioral parameters are not fully justified and support for the overall conclusions is incomplete. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists, psychologists, and neuroimaging researchers investigating the developing brain in health and disease.

eLife Assessment:

Zemel and colleagues provide a report on the fundamental electrophysiological properties of motor neurons driving song in the zebrafish and provide complementary information about cell morphology, pharmacological sensitivity, and ion channel expression and heterogeneity. They provide mainly convincing data supporting the claim of a particular ion channel class, Kv3, that plays an important role in fast electrical spiking (action potentials) in song-related neurons.

eLife assessment

In the current study, Mondoloni and colleagues reveal how a selective nicotine receptor in the interpeduncular nucleus is involved in nicotine consumption, which is an important contribution to the understanding of individual differences in drug addiction. However, the preferred hypothesis would benefit from testing in additional experimental models, metabolic assessment, and cell-type specificity.

eLife assessment

The cerebellum plays a critical role in motor learning, but exactly which forms of synaptic plasticity contribute to learning, as well as the underlying molecular mechanisms, remain poorly understood. In this study, Wang and colleagues show that presynaptic long-term potentiation at the parallel fiber to Purkinje cell synapse is required for one form of motor learning, and involves a previously-unknown signaling cascade, where EPAC activation leads to PKCε-dependent threonine phosphorylation of RIM1α. This study provides new insights into the underlying mechanisms and functional consequences of presynaptic LTP.

eLife assessment

This paper expands on prior work by using whole-brain calcium imaging in Drosophila to examine how spontaneous and forced walking and turning affect neural activity in the brain. The measurements presented will serve as a valuable resource for the fly systems neuroscience community and suggest many testable hypotheses that may serve as the basis for future studies. Analyses of the data are solid, but conclusions drawn should be presented with more caveats. This article will be of interest to neuroscientists engaged with the central problem of how behavior modulates neural activity.

eLife assessment

This study makes a valuable contribution to our functional understanding of the atypical amino-acid transporter SLC6A177 at nerve cell synapses and the role of SLC6A17 variants in certain forms of intellectual disability. The reported evidence that disease-linked SLC6A17 variants cause behavioral abnormalities is convincing. However, corresponding molecular underpinnings, i.e. the molecular role of SLC6A17 in synapses and the functional molecular consequences of disease-related SLC6A17 variations, remain unclear because corresponding informative experimental approaches are missing - most importantly direct measurements of the transport activity of SLC6A17 in the various genetic contexts studied. This limits the robustness and validity of key mechanistic conclusions drawn from the present work.

eLife assessment

This valuable work in human subjects reports that sounds that were associated with specific memories during waking behaviors can trigger the reactivation of these memory representations during REM sleep. However, the evidence supporting the conclusions is currently incomplete. Still, the work has the potential to expand our understanding of memory processing during sleep.

eLife Assessment

Using a novel multi-depth plan display, this study reveals a valuable finding regarding crowding - it decreases with small depth differences between the target and flankers but increases with larger depth differences. The evidence supporting this finding is convincing, although the explanation of the findings is somewhat speculative. This paper will be of interest to visual scientists, neuroscientists, and ophthalmologists, especially those working on visual crowding and depth perception.

eLife assessment

This study presents useful findings on an important question in cognitive neuroscience - whether the brain can form sensory predictions during sleep. The paradigm used is compelling but evidence supporting the claims of the authors is incomplete. Major issues pertaining to large differences between the pattern of brain responses observed here relative to effects reported in the literature previously, and some evidence that the study might be underpowered to make strong conclusions about certain aspects of the data.